Slowly he caressed her, watching his hand as it moved across her creamy skin, delighting in the sight of her nipples prickling in response to his touch. He stroked down across the soft skin of her stomach, and Megan twisted beneath him, her body thrumming with passion. He ran his fingertips down over her hip and along the side of her thigh, then moved back up, sliding them between her legs. She clamped her legs together, startled, but at the same time suddenly, intensely, aroused.
Theo smiled down into her eyes as his hands moved slowly up, separating her legs. Her breath rasped in her throat, and her legs fell apart, opening to him. Megan closed her eyes, giving herself over to the sensation.
His fingers were on her, slipping across the slick flesh, opening, teasing, stroking. Megan gasped, and her heart seemed to wobble in her chest as heat rolled and twisted through her.
She was all feeling now, every inch of her alive to each new pleasure that rippled through her body. With every moment, she was sure that she had reached the height of sensation, that she could feel nothing more intense than what she felt right then, and in the next instant, she was trembling under the force of an even greater pleasure.
As his fingers caressed her, found and explored her most intimate flesh, Theo’s mouth trailed across her chest and onto the supremely soft skin of her breasts. With tongue and lips and teeth he teased, stirring them both to an almost painful pleasure. When at last he took her nipple into his mouth, Megan let out a small whimper of delight.
She wanted, and with every stroke of his tongue, each pull of his mouth, she wanted more. Megan dug her fingers into his shoulders, her wordless moans urging him on. He murmured her name against her skin, his voice thick with passion.
Desire was building in him, pounding like fury with every beat of his heart. The mists of passion clouded his brain as he struggled to maintain control.
Megan let out a low sob of pleasure, reason seeming to hang by a tenuous thread. Something was building in her, so forceful and stunning that her limbs trembled, tightened. She ached with the sweetest longing she had ever known. It was as if she were racing, racing toward her destination, fear tickling in the back of her mind that somehow the moment would end before she reached it.
His fingers slipped inside her as his mouth feasted on her breasts. And she shattered.
Before she could even gather her scattered wits or relax into that deep satisfaction, he was gently stoking her passion again, caressing her sensitized flesh into a renewal of hunger. Limp, exhausted from the storm of her release, she lay in a haze of pleasure, as he coaxed from her still more desire.
His hands went to her hips, lifting her as he slipped between her legs. Slowly he slid into her, filling her, astonishing her yet again with a new pleasure, a deep satisfaction at this final completion that far outran the brief slash of pain as he entered.
His mouth covered hers, his hunger compelling hers, as he began to move inside her. Megan’s hands fisted in his hair, and she moved beneath him, driven to match his rhythm, to meet him passion for passion. This, above all else, was what she wanted, she knew. To be melded to him, to move with him, breath and heart surging as one.
She was his and he hers and, as they flung themselves higher, harder, faster, until they teetered on that last, fierce precipice, then tumbled over in an explosion of release, she knew that whatever else might happen, they would never again be apart. Where it mattered, in the center of them, they were united.
*
MEGAN AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING in her own bed. She stretched and lay still for a moment, a smile hovering about her lips, letting herself luxuriate for a little while in the pleasure that permeated her body.
She felt a little sore and bruised, used in a wickedly delightful way. And she had never felt quite such satisfaction and happiness in her life.
Her smile widened to a grin as she stretched and sat up, pulling the sheets up to cover her nakedness. Her nightgown, she noted, was laid across the foot of her bed. Theo must have carried her in here sometime in the night, she thought. She had been so deeply asleep, she had not even known it.
Megan would have liked to have awakened in his bed, cuddled up to his long, hard body. Then they could have held one another as they had last night after they had made love, talking about nothing and everything, lazily caressing one another until the need had overtaken them and they had made love all over again, more slowly and thoroughly this time, but with no less cataclysmic pleasure.
But it wouldn’t have done, she knew, for her to still be in his bed when the rest of the household got up. It would be a tremendous scandal if one of the maids had come in upon them, or if Megan ran into the duchess in the hallway as she made her way back to her room, still clad in her nightgown.
Secrecy, she knew, would have to be a watchword of their relationship, however much it pained her. The fatalist in her knew that Theo was her destiny, that her heart was his for the rest of her life. The realist in her knew that she could be no more than a beloved mistress to a future duke. And if that knowledge ate a little at her happiness, well, that was simply something she would have to overcome, just as she would have to overcome the fierce disapproval of her family.
The important thing was that she had found her love, her life, and she had no intention of letting him go.
She rose and bathed, then dressed, in a quiet hum of happiness. She was late to breakfast, for the twins were long finished and already up in their schoolroom, so she grabbed only a quick bite and a cup of tea before she joined them.
“Miss Henderson! I mean, Mulcahey,” Alex hastily amended. “You look beautiful.”
“Why, thank you, Alex,” Megan replied, her grin springing up again.
“What happened? Did you find out something about your brother?” Con asked, leaning forward, interested.
“A little,” Megan admitted. “But I found out more about myself. And it’s very nice.”
The boys looked puzzled, but shrugged it off and returned to their studies. Megan tried to settle down to their schoolwork, too, but she found her mind wandering off with regularity, hopping from Theo to her future to the Cavendish Museum to speculation of just what had taken place on the day her brother died.
She was afraid she blushed later in the morning when Theo strolled in, and, after one dazzling smile for him, she struggled to keep her distance and an aloof manner.
She realized that she must not have done a very good job of it when, after Theo left, Con asked her bluntly, “Are you in love with Theo?”
“What? Don’t be absurd,” she said repressively.
Con and Alex rolled their eyes at one another, and Con went on, “’Cause he’s silly about you.”
Alex nodded. “Just like Rafe was with Kyria.” He screwed up his face in a puzzled look. “Are grown-ups always like that?”
Megan could not help but laugh. “I’m not sure. Perhaps they are. It’s…fun to be silly about someone.”
Con shook his head, and the boys bent their heads once again to their schoolwork.