.
and even took pleasure from giving satisfaction to the women he bedded. He had noted that doing so made a woman much more malleable and eager to please him, not just in bed, but in other ways as well.
He told himself that to begin thus with his wife would only be wise.
Roland reached the top step, and opened the door, surprised to be greeted by a darkness that was only slightly alleviated by the bed of glowing coals in the hearth. Quietly Roland stepped inside, his warrior’s reflexes always at the ready for danger. This was, after all, the home of the Chalmerses, enemies to his family for several generations. He stood still, giving his eyes a moment to adjust to the dim interior. But he soon realized there was no threat here. There were no skulking shadows, no unusual sounds. Most telling of all, there was no lurking heaviness, the kind that always accompanied danger.
He allowed himself to relax somewhat. Eagerly now, Roland looked about the chamber, but was unable to locate his bride.
He was just beginning to believe the room might not be occupied at all when he heard the sound of a soft breath. Gauging the direction immediately, he moved to the bed. He was surprised, having thought her fear too great for her to await him there. He was also pleased. Perhaps the maid was not as frightened as he had thought.
He made his way to the huge shadow of the bed. Quickly Roland removed his garments. He then drew open the heavy hangings and climbed inside.
Roland reached out a seeking hand and came into contact with the delicate curve of a hip. His bride. His loins tightened at the memory of her beauty. Though his desire stirred he knew he must go slowly to bring her a pleasure to match his own. But he had no wish to speak with anything but his body. That they were strangers could not truly be changed in moments. Yet tonight they would form a bond of pleasure taken and given. This bond Roland trusted more than any ones of an emotional nature.
Sensing rather than seeing the shape of her form beneath him, Roland moved up to lean over her. Her breath was sweet and warm on his face and he felt that stirring again. Slowly he bent over and placed his lips to his bride’s.
She gave a slight start and reared up beneath him. He continued to press his mouth gently to hers and in a moment felt a stab of satisfaction as her small hand came up to curl in the dark patch of hair on his chest. He continued to ply her mouth with his own, nipping and sucking at hers and soon she reached up with the other to hold the back of his head.
Roland laughed deep in his throat, pleased with her reaction to his kiss. He felt a rising satisfaction and growing ardor of his own as he realized he had not been wrong in thinking she would respond. His ardent mouth moved from hers to trail over her soft cheeks and then down the delicate line of her throat.
Meredyth had been dreaming of lying upon an enormous soft bed. It was so soft that she had the sensation of floating in a peaceful sea of white linens and light. Nothing could trouble her here, where she was safe and warm and content.
Slowly she became aware of the lips that touched hers, and it seemed at first as if they too belonged to the dream. They were firm yet gentle, and oh so very certain. It seemed they heightened that sense of floating in warmth and light.
Then as she drifted more fully into semiwakefulness she felt another odd sort of tingling in her belly that also seemed brought by the confident and knowing urgency of the lips on hers. Her hands acted of their own accord as they searched instinctively for the source of that sweetly rousing pressure.
She came into contact with smooth bare flesh over hard muscle. Meredyth moaned at the immediate quickening of her pulse as the lips left hers to press hot gentle kisses to her face and neck. Meredyth had dreamed of such things before, had woken feeling guilty at her own responses and unaccountably sad that it was not real. Yet her dreams of being kissed, touched, of touching in return, had never gone so far. She could not find the strength to pull herself away. She was too lost in her own responses. By whatever means this specter had entered her slumber, it had come to banish some of the aching loneliness she felt.
Her heart thudded in her breast as the warm sensations turned liquid and seemed to find their way to her lower belly. Meredyth had never felt so…so very…Her hips arched as if her body understood far more of what was happening than did she. Her hands seemed to grasp the source of her pleasure to her with a will all their own.
Roland felt himself harden even more at her touch, at her nearness. There was something about this woman, her delicate warm woman scent, the velvet of her skin. He had not thought to respond so fully, so quickly.
He rose up above her, his hands unexpectedly unsteady as he gently drew her slender legs apart. His fingers found her. He swallowed hard at finding her already damp, and an irrefutably fierce driving need such as he had never experienced coursed through him. “So beautiful, Celeste,” he whispered, even as he knew he could wait no more.
Meredyth felt the hands on her body, heard her sister’s name with a shock of horrid realization. Dear heaven, this was not a dream. It was none other than Roland St. Sebastian whose smooth skin lay beneath her eager fingers, whose mouth teased her to such a fierce response. Even through the fog of her awakening desire she knew that this was wrong. This man was not meant for her.
The woman beneath him gave a start and reared up beneath him. Her voice emerged in a husky whisper. “My lord, I am not…” His mouth found hers, stilling the words. He did not wish to debate or argue. He had meant this time to be more, and was in no small measure surprised with himself for not having more control. Yet he could not wait. Her obvious response to him made it impossible.
Without breaking the contact of their mouths, he knelt between those silken thighs and found the moistness of her immediately. With only the briefest of hesitations her maidenhood was breached. She gasped, as he did, when his mouth left hers.
Convulsively her body tightened on him. Calling on all the will he possessed, Roland lay still, allowing her to become accustomed to him as he rested there in the velvety warmth of her body. He might not have been able to restrain himself enough to pleasure her first as he wished to, but he would not cause her hurt.
As Meredyth felt Roland St. Sebastian enter the private depths of her being, she realized it was too late now. There was no going back. Roland St. Sebastian had made her his woman, though she had tried to tell him the truth that she was not Celeste. Yet as he lay above her, his manhood filling the deepest core of herself, Meredyth felt an unexpected yearning ache stir again in her own body. When he began to move inside her, her breath quickened as that ache began to grow more pronounced.
Only when Roland felt a slight restless stirring of her own slender form beneath him did he go on. Only then did Roland give in to the passion that made him feel as if he would surely burst, the passion that quickly grew to a fierce white point of unutterable pleasure.
When he stiffened and arched against her, Meredyth felt her own body press against him. She somehow knew that he had gone to some place that she could only begin to imagine, and that she had been the one to take him there. It was awesome, that this strong commanding man had been moved beyond himself because of her—Meredyth.
Yet uppermost in her thoughts was the knowledge that what they had just done had awakened some slumbering force inside herself. She could even now feel the way her body held him to her as if it had some instinctive claim to the feel of his flesh, his touch, to him. Even the ragged sound of his hot breath against her ear was strangely thrilling.
Her own hands lay along the hard curves of his shoulders. Unable to stop herself, Meredyth slipped one hand to his chest and over that tantalizing firm flesh, across a corded neck. She tangled her fingers in thick coarse hair. A low sensuous chuckle was her reward, for it did feel like such when the sound made every fine hair on her body stand up as if in reply.
Roland knew he had not fulfilled her, but he was now more than ready to rectify that. He rolled to his side, his mouth finding hers to cover a sigh of what sounded to his ears like disappointment. Deliberately he smoothed a hand from her hip up across delicate fabric, tracing pleasingly rounded curves and valleys. The thin cloth of her night rail did nothing to disguise the firmness of the flesh beneath, and Roland was well pleased. He went on, encouraged by the