Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy, #2)(74)

“At last,” he said with satisfaction. Then he groaned. “Christ. There are more.”

“Oh, you’re nowhere near through. I’m trussed up like a Christmas goose,” I said as he lifted the bodice away from the skirts, revealing the corset below. “Or, more accurately, an Advent goose.”

But Matthew wasn’t paying any attention to me. Instead my husband was focused on the place where my nearly transparent high-necked smock disappeared into the heavy reinforced fabric of the corset. He pressed his lips against the swell. Bowing his head in a reverential pose, he took in a jagged breath.

So did I. It was surprisingly erotic, the brush of his lips somehow magnified by the fine lawn boundary. Not knowing what made him stop his previously single-minded efforts to get me unclothed, I cradled his head in my hands and waited for him to make his next move.

At last Matthew took my hands and wrapped them around the carved post that held up the corner of the canopy. “Hold on,” he said.

Tug. Rasp. Tug. Rasp. Before he was finished, Matthew took a moment to slide his hands inside the stays. They swooped around my rib cage and found my breasts. I moaned softly as he trapped my smock between the warm, pebbled skin of my nipples and his cool fingers. He pulled me back against him.

“Do I seem like a man interested in pleasing anyone but you?” he murmured into my ear. When I didn’t immediately answer, one hand snaked down my stomach to press me closer. The other remained where it was, cupping my breast.

“No.” My head tilted back into his shoulder, exposing my neck.

“Then no more talk about my father. And I’ll buy you twenty identical gowns tomorrow if you will stop worrying about your sleeves now.” Matthew was busily ruching up my smock so that the hem skirted the tops of my legs. I loosed my grip on the bedpost, grabbed at his hand, and placed it at the juncture of my thighs.

“No more talking,” I agreed, gasping when his fingers parted my flesh.

Matthew quieted me further with a kiss. The slow movements of his hands were causing an entirely different reaction as the tension in my body rose.

“Too many clothes,” I said breathlessly. His agreement was unstated, but evident in the haste with which he slid the corset down my arms. The laces were loose enough now that I could push it over my hips and step out of it. I unfastened his breeches while Matthew unbuttoned his doublet. These two items had been joined at his hips by just as many crossed laces as my bodice and skirt.

When we were both wearing nothing more than hose, I removed my smock, and Matthew his shirt, we paused, awkwardness returning.

“Will you let me love you, Diana?” Matthew said, sweeping away my anxiety with that simple, courteous question.

“I will,” I whispered. He knelt and carefully untied the ribbons that held up my stockings. They were blue, which Catrine said was the color of fidelity. Matthew rolled the hose down my legs, a press of lips on knees and ankles marking their passage. He removed his own hose so quickly that I never had an opportunity to note the color of his garters.

Matthew lifted me slightly so that my toes were barely gripping the floor and he could fit himself into the notch between my legs.

“We may not make it to the bed,” I said, grabbing onto his shoulders. I wanted him inside me, quickly.

But we did make it to that soft, shadowed place, ridding ourselves of our linen along the way. Once there, my body welcomed him into the moon of my thighs while my arms reached to draw him down to me. Even so I gasped in surprise when our two bodies became one—warm and cold, light and dark, female and male, witch and vampire, a conjunction of opposites.

Matthew’s expression went from reverential to wondering when he began to move within me, and it became intent after he angled his body and I reacted with a pleased cry. He slipped his arm under the small of my back and lifted me into his hips while my hands gripped his shoulders.

We fell into the rhythm unique to lovers, pleasing each other with soft touches of mouth and hands as we rocked together, together until all we had left to give were our hearts and souls. Looking deep into each other’s eyes, we exchanged our final vows with flesh and spirit until we were as soft and trembling as newborns.

“Let me love you forever,” Matthew murmured against my damp forehead, his lips trailing a cold path across my brow as we lay twined together.

“I will,” I promised once more, tucking my body even closer against him.





Chapter Thirteen




"I like being married,” I said drowsily. Since surviving the day-after feast and the receiving of gifts last week—most of them mooing or clucking— we’d done nothing but make love, talk, sleep, and read. Occasionally Chef sent up a tray of food and drink to sustain us. Otherwise we were left alone. Not even Philippe interrupted our time together.

“You seem to be taking to it well,” Matthew said, nuzzling the tip of his cold nose behind my ear. I was lying, facedown and legs sprawled, in a room used to store spare weaponry above the smithy. Matthew was on top of me, shielding me from the draft coming through the gaps in the wooden door. Though I was unsure of how much of my own body would be exposed if someone walked in, Matthew’s posterior and bare legs were certainly on view. He moved against me suggestively.

“You can’t possibly want to do that again.” I laughed happily when he repeated the movement. I wondered if this sexual stamina was a vampire thing or a Matthew thing.