Her words spoken with soft and imploring eyes were more than he could take.
Julian took himself in hand, sliding into her wet folds until he was poised at her entrance. He shook with anticipation as he drew back and muffled her cry with his mouth as he thrust into her. Blinding bliss engulfed him in a wave as he sheathed himself in her welcoming warmth. For countless heartbeats, he held himself still, eyes squeezed shut, afraid to move, and almost unable to breathe for fear of breaking the spell that penetrated him to the very marrow of his being. He’d been so cold, so empty, for so very long.
He finally opened his eyes to gaze into hers. “Did I hurt you?”
She winced. “A little, but I wanted this. I wanted you, Julian.” Her gaze held his as her lips curved into a shy smile. “And now I am yours for the taking. Please. Make me yours completely.”
With their eyes locked, he began moving, slowly, cautiously at first until she pulled him closer, tighter, and began meeting his thrusts with soft sounds of pleasure. Losing himself in her eyes, Julian found not just his release, but the missing pieces of his soul.
“I am yours, Henrietta Price. Yours completely. Body, heart, and soul.”
EPILOGUE
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HENRIETTA LAY IN HER NIGHT RAIL snug beneath the covers, nose buried in a book, when Julian pounced onto the bed beside her. “It’s barely a sennight into our marriage, Hen. What the devil are you doing in bed with a book?”
“I’m reading it, Julian. It’s a highly engaging story.”
His brows rose. “Is it indeed?”
“Shall I read a few passages to you?”
He exhaled a petulant sound and threw himself onto his back, hands thrust behind his head. “Reading is hardly what I had in mind when I came to bed.”
Henrietta stole a glance at him before licking her finger and turning the page. She then read aloud, “He is now in bed with me the first time. Thrusting up his shirt and my shift, he laid his naked glowing body to mine . . . Oh, insupportable delight! Oh! Superhuman rapture! What pain could stand before a pleasure so transporting? I felt no more the smart of my wounds below; but, curling round him like the tendril of a vine, as if I feared any part of him should be untouched or unpressed by me, I returned his strenuous embraces and kisses with a fervor and gust only known to true love, and which mere lust never rises to.”
He sat up abruptly and scowled at the cover. “What the devil kind of book is that?”
Ignoring the question, she licked her finger and turned another page. “My beauteous youth was now glued to me in all the folds and twists that we could make our bodies meet in; when, no longer able to rein in the fierceness of refreshed desires, he gives his steed the head, and gently insinuating his thighs between mine, stopping my mouth with kisses of humid fire, makes a fresh eruption, and renewing his thrusts, pierces, tears, and forces his way up the torn, tender folds that yielded him admission. Soon his thrusts, more and more furious, cheeks flushed with a deeper scarlet, his eyes turned up in the fervent fit, some dying sighs, and an agonizing shudder, announced the approaches of that ecstatic pleasure when the warm gush darts through all the ravished inwards; what floods of bliss! What melting transports! What agonies of delight! Too fierce, too mighty for nature to sustain . . .” Henrietta gasped as he snatched the book from her hands.
Julian’s brows rose as he read the spine. “Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure? You are reading Fanny Hill? Where the devil did you get this?”
“Lady Cheswick gave it to me.”
“This obscene work has been banned for decades.”
“Obscene?” Henrietta laughed. “I find it well written and most enlightening.”
“You do understand that this is a work of prurient fantasy, specifically designed to incite sexual arousal?”
“Yes. I quite comprehend that part, Julian.” She glanced up at him, unable to suppress the curve in her lips. “And I am not unaffected by it. Are you?”
Tossing the book down, he threw his head back in raucous laughter. “My God, Hen! What have I gotten myself into?”
“Why are you laughing? I told you I wanted to learn how to please you. It is my greatest desire to inspire your love and passion, Julian.”
“My love and my passion?” He rolled her beneath him and kissed her deeply. “My dear, dear, girl,” he murmured between the kisses he rained all over her face. “You should be very careful what you wish for . . . because you just may get it.”
END
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