“It was.” Ethan drew his finger down her nose again, and right on down her midline under the covers to her mons. “He was concerned I would send him and Joshua away when Joshua turned six.”

“You didn’t mock him, did you?”

“I hugged him,” Ethan said, curling down to bury his face against Alice’s neck. “I told him I would be miserable if he wanted to tear off into the world so soon, and Alexandra, I meant every word.”

“Oh, well done, Ethan.” Alice hugged him to her. “Well done, indeed.”

They were quiet for a long moment, Ethan letting himself bask in her approval and affection and in the rare knowledge she loved his children the same way he did.

“I think your sons are happier now than they were at the beginning of the summer.” She stroked the back of his head as she spoke, and Ethan wanted to hold so still that she never stopped, so much did he like the way she touched him.

“They are,” Ethan said, picking up the reins of the conversation. “As am I.”

“Oh, let’s make it unanimous.” She sounded so pleased with herself. “Though I wasn’t exactly unhappy previously.”

“I’m pleased.” Ethan brushed his mouth across hers. “Pleased you’re happy with us. Joshua asked me if I thought you’d ever canter.”

“Ah, do that again. Please.”

He willingly obliged, in part because his efforts to ease her closer to lovemaking with words and simple bodily proximity were having their effect on him. He kissed her with the slow, relaxed savoring of a man who knows he has all night, hours and hours, just to move to the next step.

When he began to explore her mouth with his tongue, Ethan felt Alice shift on the mattress, her limbs relaxing, her spine lengthening.

“Kiss me back, love,” Ethan coaxed, his tongue teasing past her lips. “Come out and play with me.”

He paused, his mouth a hairsbreadth away from hers, waiting for Alice to arch up and brushed her lips against his. She repeated the caress twice more, until Ethan pressed her mouth open beneath his. She twined her arms around his neck with a slow, languorous sigh, and Ethan felt his heartbeat kick up a notch.

The barest hint of a misgiving skittered through his vitals, but not for the usual reasons. He wasn’t experiencing the old uncertainties or ambiguities; he had no doubt he and Alice belonged in that bed together. He was neither unsure of himself sexually nor fearful of inexplicably losing his desire for her. He experienced an instant’s hesitation only because he wanted this night to be better than right for her. He wanted it to be perfect.

And then Alice pulled her body closer to his and found his lips with her own. She welcomed him into the kiss and then welcomed him further, her legs spreading as Ethan shifted his body over hers.

The doubts Ethan battled—not just that night, but many nights in the past twenty years—vanished. He knew what to do, knew how to express his caring for this woman with his mouth and his hands, and body. This was Alice, whom he cared for greatly, and with her, for this one night at least, all would be well.

He closed his eyes, let himself feel the wonder of her naked body beneath his, and gave himself up to the loving.

* * *

When Ethan began to kiss her in earnest, a bolt of anxiety went through Alice’s body and her mind. She lost track of the kiss and began to fret, even as Ethan’s tongue glided sinuously over hers: What if she couldn’t breathe? What if this night left Ethan with a disgust of her? What if she couldn’t enjoy what he was trying to share with her? She hadn’t cared with Mr. Durbeyfield, being only a little bit curious and a lot bored. With Ethan, God help her, she cared a great deal. Cared too much, and hence, the worrying gathered momentum.

But then he shifted, bringing his body carefully over hers in an embrace that caged Alice between Ethan and the bed. For all of her adult life, she’d hated being confined, hated any sort of entrapment. To be anchored under him this way should have made her frantic to escape.

A different panic gripped her, though. She wasn’t frantic to escape. She was frantic to get closer to him. She did not like being confined—maybe nobody did. But she saw it was also true, true in a blindingly new and stark way, that for all her adult life, she’d been profoundly lonely. And what Ethan offered her was not confinement, but rather, intimacy. He offered her the closeness that had nothing to do with confinement and binding, but instead sought to free her.

With Ethan’s body sheltering hers, his naked strength surrounding her, she felt that paradoxical sense of being utterly in accord with another and yet utterly unfettered, and she wanted intensely—desperately—to bring that feeling closer. She spread her legs, letting him settle against her, and wrapped her arms around him.

“Easy,” Ethan murmured, grazing her jaw with his nose. “There’s no rush, love. None at all.”

Alice felt the impressive length of his erection against her belly. “I want you closer.”

“Soon,” he assured her, pained humor in that one word. “Wrap your legs around me.”

He whispered his request again before she opened her eyes, brushed the hair back from his forehead, and shifted the angle of her hips to accommodate him.

“Like this?” She kissed his shoulder then scraped him with her teeth. He tasted clean and warm and faintly of the lavender sachets Mrs. Buxton hung in all the wardrobes.

“Like that.” Ethan dipped his head to kiss her mouth. “Now guide me to you.”

Alice left off using her tongue to taste his flesh. “Guide you?”

“Take me in your hand,” he said, holding her gaze steadily, “and guide me home.”

Ethan remained poised above her, his gaze locked with hers. There was both challenge and reassurance in his gaze. He would not subject her to the kind of fumbling she’d known before with another man. He was not going to allow her to passively tolerate intimacy either, but most of all, he was not going to allow her to be disappointed. Not in him, not in herself, not in what they shared.

Alice saw all that before she closed her eyes.

He nuzzled her throat. “Take my cock in your hand and show me where you want me. I’ll wait all night, if you want me to, but that means you wait too.”

Logic, and at such a time. Alice tucked her face against his shoulder and brushed her fingers over the soft skin crowning his member.

He could wait all night, she was sure of that—and equally sure she could not.

* * *

Ethan felt a tentative brush of Alice’s fingers over the head of his cock. He thought of accounts payable and boiled cabbage and the recipe for Miller’s horse liniment, and even tried the Lord’s Prayer in Latin, but Alice closed her grip around him and brought him snug against her damp sex.

He had to kiss her.

“God above.” He exhaled unsteadily, resting his forehead against hers but unable to resist her mouth for long. He sealed his lips over hers in a hot, open-mouthed, needy plea for some kind of immediate joining. Her tongue met his, and it was all he could do not to roar into her body, tongue, cock, fingers, anything.

“Ethan, please…” Alice tried to move against him, to take him into her body on her own initiative, but Ethan feinted with his hips.

“Behave,” he said. “We savor this.” He emphasized his words with the barest hint of forward movement of his hips, and Alice abruptly ceased her attempts to rush their joining.

“Better,” he murmured, then, “relax, my love. We’re not going to hurry this.”

She could not relax. Beneath him, Ethan felt the tension in Alice’s body, felt the tight, shallow breaths she expelled against his neck. He wanted to believe she was simply aroused past bearing, but she was so tight around the tip of his cock, he had to suspect she was simply anxious.

“Breathe, love, and recall your promise.”

She opened eyes that had been tightly shut, and peered at him in the dim light as he brushed his fingertips over her forehead. “My promise?”

“You’ll tell me if you don’t like something or if it’s uncomfortable. If you ask it, I will stop.”

“I don’t want you to stop,” Alice replied, sounding more resolute than aroused.

“And I don’t want to be stopped, but you promised.”

He held himself against her, applying a firm, steady pressure but making no move to advance more deeply into her body. She wanted him, of that he was confident, but she lacked the experience to know her body needed time.

“It isn’t supposed to be this difficult,” Alice muttered.

Ethan pressed more firmly into her.

“Tell me how it’s supposed to be,” he said, laying his cheek against hers.

“Easy,” Alice replied, sounding a little bewildered, “and sweet and pleasant.”

Merciful God. He was about to explode, and she expected a tea party. “This is pleasant,” Ethan said, kissing her lingeringly.

“I feel… discontent.”

“Discontent is good,” Ethan murmured before slipping a hand down and closing it over her breast.

“That is good.”

“Not just good. Lovely, beautiful, dear…” He caressed and stroked and gently kneaded, all the while holding his cock against her, but just shy of real penetration. When Ethan closed his fingers around her nipple, Alice groaned, and using her ankles for leverage, heaved her hips against him.

He allowed it and slipped that first hot, glorious, wet inch inside her body.

“Shame on you, Alexandra. I’ll kiss you silly for that.”

She turned her head to hasten her fate, and Ethan obliged by covering her mouth with his again. She came out not to play, but to tease, entice, coax, and madden with her mouth and tongue and sexy little sighs. “Ethan, I need you.”