That made him smile. He pressed another kiss to her lips. She tapped his nose with her straw.
He rolled to his side, forcing her to her back, and he drew close to her face. “Char Dunlevee, will you marry me?”
“Where will we live?”
“Here. Or wherever you want to be.”
“Just us?”
“Just us.”
Joshua moved closer, their sides touching, and traced his hand down over her ribs and along the curve of her waist. Their mouths met in another kiss, growing more heated and more meaningful. She wound her hand over his shoulders and slid her fingers through his hair. There was physical intercourse, and it was certainly intimate, but there was another kind of familiarity. The kind that said, I know you.
He broke their kiss. His breath came hard. Shrugging, he removed his jacket and then fell back into her arms.
Joshua stared into her gaze for a minute.
“Yes,” she said.
Yes to his marriage proposal or the other unspoken invitation? The one that made her sisters’ antics look tame.
She wrapped her hand in his shirt, catching some of his waistcoat and stock, pulling him close again. “Yes,” she said.
“Are you sure you want to do this in a hayloft?”
“Don’t talk,” she said.
Their mouths met again in mutual agreement. She was fresh like the wild fields, tasting of honeyed flowers and fertile earth. Cool, yet comfortingly warm.
He reached for her skirts and began the slow lifting—the crunching, crackling sound foreign in the hayloft setting—until his fingers brushed over her bare thigh, silky-smooth and welcoming. He slid his hand upward until he found the curve of her ass. When he cupped her bottom and squeezed, she moaned a bit, the reverberations singing through the kiss and shooting out to his groin.
Ah, hell! He did not want to rush this.
He pressed kisses down her neck then licked over her breasts. She arched, exposing more of herself—the light blue veins, the delicate collarbone.
“You’re sure?”
“It has been over two years. I am sure. You can see me naked some other time.”
He hung his head and laughed, helping control his anxiety. “My darling Char.”
“My dear Mr. Forrester.”
Joshua worked to free his cock, swept her skirts higher, waited for her to remove her unmentionables and then settled between her legs. It was all very efficient, as if they had done it a hundred times. Except they were both gasping as if it were the first time.
She plowed both of her hands through his hair and drew him near.
“Kiss me as if I am the only girl in the world.” Her brilliant smile could have ignited a fire in the loft. It certainly did disastrous things to his flammable cock.
“How about I kiss you as if you are the only girl in my world?”
“That will do.”
They kissed once, and again, before their mouths opened. Their tongues danced and their breath became one.
Joshua tilted his hips, his cock sliding along the wet fold between her thighs. He clamped his hand over her leg and lifted it around his waist.
There was no searching. He was home.
He slid into her body, going slow, filling her and satisfying all of his recent dreams about this one woman. Evidently, he fulfilled something in her as well. She was pleading to an unknown god.
Deep inside her sheath, he experience near pain trying to delay his gratification. He had to take a few breaths.
She was tight and slippery. And the only thing left for him to do was thrust. Shortly, neither of them wanted to kiss. They struggled against each other—Joshua holding her captive beneath him while he worked inside her body. Char clenching, squeezing, determined to milk him dry. And succeeding.
When he was certain he could not last another stroke, she said, “Wait for me.”
He grit his teeth, held steady and recited the Greek alphabet.
Beneath him, Char was straining. He could feel every pull of her sheath until, finally, she gasped. Her body jerked around him. Joshua let loose a stream of fluid, withdrew and sank deep again. Another rush of ejaculate filled her.
And with a last jerk, he lay over her, trying not to crush her now that all of his vigor had been spent.
Char’s eyes remained closed, but she wore a dreamy smile.
When she opened her eyes and stared at him, she said, “Will you marry me?”
CHAPTER NINE
THE SUN HAD LONG SINCE SET when they climbed down the ladder, but there was a three-quarter moon, illuminating the barn and the fields beyond. The air had cooled enough to make one seek a low fire rather than remain naked in the night air.
Somehow they got down the rickety ladder. Joshua waited for her at the bottom, set his hands to her waist and swept her off her feet.
He helped pluck the last of the straw from hair. They giggled like children, she thought, then kissed like longtime lovers.
“I’ll walk you home,” he said, with regret in his voice. He had her backed up against a horse stall, his hands stroking up and down her body.
“Yes, we should go, but only to the stable.”