Secrets of a Summer Night (Wallflowers #1)(76)

Giving her sated flesh a last savoring lick, Simon worked his way back up her body. Her thighs were limp as he pushed them wide apart, the head of his shaft nudging against her. Looking down into her dazed face, Simon smoothed her hair back from her forehead.

Her lips curved in a wobbly smile as she glanced up at him. “I forgot all about my bank account,” she said, and he laughed softly.

His thumb brushed over the edge of her forehead, where fine skin blended into flossy hair. “Poor Annabelle…” The pressure between her legs increased, delivering the first intimation of pain. “I’m afraid the next part won’t be nearly as enjoyable. For you, at any rate.”

“I don’t mind…I…I’m just so glad that it’s you.”

No doubt it was an odd thing for a bride to say on her wedding night, but it brought a smile to his lips. He lowered his head and began to whisper in her ear, even as he tightened his h*ps to breach her untried flesh. She forced herself to hold still despite the instinct to writhe away from the intrusion. “Sweetheart…” His breath became ragged, and as he paused inside her, he seemed to struggle for self-control. “Yes, that’s it…just a little more…” He moved in another careful advance, and hesitated again. “A little more…” He deepened his entry in lingering degrees, carefully courting her body into accepting him. “More…”

“How much more?” she gasped. He was too hard, the pressure too intense, and she wondered anxiously how this could ever be anything but uncomfortable.

Simon gritted his teeth at the effort it took to hold still. “I’m about halfway there,” he finally managed, an apologetic note in his voice.

“Half—” Annabelle began to protest with a shaky laugh, and winced as he pushed again. “Oh, this is impossible, I can’t, I can’t—”

But he kept impelling himself deeper, trying to soothe her pain with his mouth and hands. Gradually it became easier, the pain fading into a mild, prolonged burn. A long sigh escaped her as she felt her body yielding, her virginal flesh conceding to the inevitability of his possession. Simon’s back was a mass of tightly cobbled muscle, his belly as hard as carved rosewood. Holding himself deep inside her, he groaned, while a shiver ran across his shoulders. “You’re so tight,” he said hoarsely.

“I-I’m sorry—”

“No, no,” he managed. “Don’t be sorry. My God.” His voice was slurred, as if he was drunk on pleasure.

They studied each other, one gaze sated, the other brilliant with yearning. A sense of wonder crept over Annabelle as she realized how thoroughly he had controverted her expectations. She had been so certain that Simon would use this opportunity to prove himself her master…and instead he had come to her with infinite patience. Filled with gratitude, she wrapped her arms around his neck. She kissed him and let her tongue enter his mouth, and she drew her hands down his back, until her palms reached the hard contours of his bu**ocks. She stroked him in shy encouragement, urging him to sink deeper inside her. The caress seemed to eradicate the remainder of his self-control. With a growl of hunger, he pushed rhythmically inside her, shaking with the effort to be gentle. The force of his release caused him to shiver hard, his teeth gritting as sensation culminated in blinding rapture. Burying his face in the filtering strands of her hair, he soaked in her honey-slick warmth. A long time passed before the iron-hard tension left his muscles, and he let out a slow breath. As he withdrew carefully from Annabelle’s body, she winced at the intimate soreness. Perceiving her discomfort, he caressed her hip in gentle consolation.

“I may never leave this bed again,” he muttered, cuddling her in the crook of his arm.

“Oh, yes you will,” Annabelle said, half-drowsing. “You’re going to take me to Paris tomorrow. I won’t be deprived of the honeymoon you promised.”

Nuzzling into her tangled curls, Simon replied with the trace of a smile in his voice. “No, sweet wife…you won’t be deprived in any way.”

CHAPTER 21

During the two weeks of their honeymoon, Annabelle discovered that she was not nearly as worldly as she had considered herself to be. With a mixture of na?vete and British arrogance, she had always thought of London as the center of all culture and knowledge, but Paris was a revelation. The city was astonishingly modern, making London look like a dowdy country cousin. And yet for all its intellectual and social advancements, the streets of Paris were nearly medieval in appearance; dark, narrow and crooked as they twined through arrondissements of artfully shaped buildings. It was a messy, delightful assault to the senses, with architecture that ranged from the gothic spires of ancient churches to the solid grandeur of the Arc de Triomphe.

Their hotel, the Coeur de Paris, was located on the left bank of the Seine, between a dazzling array of shops on rue de Montparnasse and the covered markets of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, where exotic produce and fabrics and laces and art and perfume were displayed in bewildering varieties. The Coeur de Paris was a palace, with suites of rooms that had been designed for sensual pleasure. The bathing room, for example—the salle de bain, it was called—had been fitted with a rosy marble floor and Italian tiled walls, and a gilded rococco settee where the bather rested after the exertions of washing. There was not one but two porcelain tubs, each with its own boiler and cold water tank. The tubs were surmounted with a painted oval landscape on the ceiling, designed to entertain the bather as he or she relaxed. Having been brought up with the British view of a bath as a matter of hygiene to be conducted with expediency, Annabelle was amused by the notion that the act of bathing should be a decadent entertainment.