She did not often wish for the impossible, but just /sometimes /she wished she were beautiful. As she did now, for example.

She was wearing the ice blue silk and lace nightgown that had been chosen specifically for tonight - by her new mother-in-law, not by her.

She thought its low neckline too revealing. And she very much feared that if she stood just so to any particular candle, a beholder would be able to see right through it.

She might not have minded so much if there had been something worth seeing.

She hated being self-conscious about her figure - or her lack thereof. "I suppose," she said, "we will grow accustomed to this." His eyebrows rose. "I suppose we will," he agreed as he stepped into the room and came toward her. "You are not /nervous /by any chance, are you? You are the experienced one, are you not? The one who knows how to please a man - in bed." If that was a joke, she was in no mood to laugh. "You know that was a boast," she said. "I admitted as much. It would be unkind of you to throw it in my teeth at every turn." Strangely, he looked even larger and more powerful in dressing gown and slippers than he did in his great-coat and boots. Or perhaps it just seemed so because he was in her bedchamber and it was their wedding night. "Well, Vanessa." He lifted one hand and cupped her neck and one side of her face with it. "It is time to discover just how much of a boast it was." He had shaved. She could smell his shaving soap or his cologne. Whatever it was, it was a masculine scent that made her want to keep on inhaling.

She swallowed.

And his lips touched hers. Though it was not really his lips. It was the soft, moist flesh inside them. His tongue pressed hard against her own lips, and she parted them. It pressed deep inside her mouth.

She inhaled sharply through her nose. Sensation darted like an arrow into her throat and downward through her breasts and her abdomen to set up a throbbing between her inner thighs.

She recognized the feeling for what it was - pure, raw sexual desire. She had felt it out by the lake at Warren Hall the day she asked him to marry her. She had denied it to herself then. It was impossible to do so now.

He drew back his head a few inches, and she realized in some shock that he had not yet touched her anywhere below the neck. He had hardly even /started/. "It is to be hoped," he said, "that you /do /know how to please me since you are my wife and my bedfellow for life." His eyes were still heavy-lidded, and the voice he used was a bedroom voice if ever she had imagined one. It was pure velvet. "The master has spoken," she murmured. "It is to be hoped that /you /know how to please /me, /since you are my husband and my bedfellow for life." He looked steadily at her for several moments, his face expressionless.

And then the hand that had been cupping her face and neck slid lower and along her shoulder beneath her nightgown and on down her arm. The nightgown, having nowhere else to go, went with his hand until her shoulder and breast were exposed.

And then his free hand pushed the garment off her other shoulder, and since it was a loose thing that was anchored in place only at the shoulders, it slithered its way down all the way to her feet.

Only her feet were covered. It was small comfort.

He held her just above the elbows and took a step back.

And looked.

Well, she supposed she had asked for this. She had challenged him and he was giving his answer without the medium of words.

A man's way.

She gazed steadily back into his face as she raised one hand and pulled loose the sash of his dressing gown. It fell open.

He was naked beneath it.

He raised his head to look directly into her eyes again and lowered his arms to his sides. Ah, an invitation. She lifted both arms to push the dressing gown off his shoulders. It fell to the floor without even having to slither its way down. /Oh, gracious heaven./ He looked like a classical sculpture of idealized Greek manhood, except that he was no sculpture. He was bronzed from head to toe. His broad, firmly muscled chest was lightly dusted with dark hair. And he was alive and warm - she could feel his body heat even though they stood several inches apart. She could see his chest rise and fall with each breath.

He was slim-hipped and long-legged. His thighs were powerfully muscled.

He was aroused. And that part of him was large and powerful too.

She looked back into his eyes. She had been looking him over as frankly as he had been doing with her, she realized.

How horribly mismatched they were physically.

But he /was /aroused.

She touched her fingertips to his chest and then slid her palms up to rest on his shoulders.

She had never been more terrified in her life. "It seems," he said softly, "that I have something to prove." Her inner thighs and the passage within throbbed with something that felt more like pain than the simple anticipation of pleasure. "Yes," she said.

But instead of waiting for her to walk toward the bed, he bent down to pick her up and carry her there before setting her down in the middle of the mattress. He peeled back all the bedcovers before joining her there.

Naked flesh had touched naked flesh. She felt as if she were on fire.

He did not extinguish the candles.

This was not, then, something that was going to be accomplished surreptitiously under cover of blankets and darkness.

He lay on his side next to her, raised himself on one elbow, and leaned over her to kiss her again. She opened her mouth to him this time, and when his tongue came inside, she suckled it, then sucked harder to draw it deep and pulsed her teeth against it.

He made a low sound in his throat.

His hand explored her, strong and warm and nimble-fingered. He found her nipples again, as he had by the lake, and rolled them as he had then between his thumb and forefinger, but harder this time until the raw ache she felt below spiraled upward into her throat too.

He ended the kiss and moved his head to one of her breasts, taking it into his mouth, sucking on it, teasing the swollen nipple with his tongue until she buried both hands in his hair and gripped hard.

Not that she had been idle. She had turned half onto her side and moved her leg along his. She moved closer to him and rubbed herself against him, circling her hips as she did so.

And when he raised his head from her breast in order to nuzzle her in the hollow between her shoulder and neck, she took his erection in her hand, caressing him lightly, tightening her fingers about him, causing him to make a sound rather like a growl.

One of his hands was exploring her too, his long fingers pushing between her legs, parting folds, caressing, teasing, reaching up a little way inside her.

She was wet, she realized. She could both feel and hear the wetness.

Desire became pure agony.

And then he turned her onto her back again and came over on top of her.

He was big and heavy.

Wonderfully big.

Wonderfully heavy.

His knees pressed between her thighs and pushed them wide. She lifted her legs and twined them about his as he slid his hands beneath her, raised her, and came all the way inside her with one long, firm thrust.

She drew a deep breath and then could not seem to expel it.

There was no pain, but she felt stretched, filled, invaded. She had not known there was so much room inside her.

Foolish thought!

He held still for a moment while he slid his hands free, and she hooked her legs more firmly about his, tilted herself, and relaxed about him.

There /was /room, and there would be for what was about to happen, and she wanted to feel the whole of it.

She tightened her inner muscles about him. He was rock-hard.

It was his turn to inhale sharply.

And then he moved.

It was pure, raw carnal delight. Each thrust and withdrawal both aggravated and soothed the ache of her desire. And each thrust came deeper than the last - or so it seemed. There was a rhythm to the act, and Vanessa learned it and adjusted her own movements to it, contracting and relaxing inner muscles to give both him and herself delight.

What she had told him had not been an utter boast.

She /did /know how to please a man.

And he had not boasted at all, of course.

She wanted it to last forever, this sensual delight that was beyond anything she could possibly have imagined. But of course it did not. And finally she was glad it did not. She would, she felt, have gone out of her mind if there had not been a sudden convulsive clenching of her muscles that refused to unclench themselves until something - it was impossible to give it a name - came flowing softly but inexorably up from deep inside where the muscles were and burst through them and through /her /until she was trembling with wonder and then limp with a satiety that also defied words.

He had fallen still, she realized.

But then his hands were beneath her again, and he was pumping into her hard and fast until he stopped abruptly again, deep inside her, and she felt a flow of heat at her core.

She wrapped her arms about him. He was hot and sweaty.

So was she.

How strangely enticing the smell of sweat could be.

She felt suddenly cold when he disengaged from her and moved off her to lie beside her. She shivered, and he reached down and pulled the covers up over them. His one arm came beneath her neck while the other lay heavy across her. And she was warm again.

And sleepy.