He cradled the back of her head with one hand and braced himself over her with the other. “Nervousness is to be expected with a new experience. Give your nervousness to me, Genevieve.” He was not nervous—this was the most right thing he’d ever done. He was aroused, though, and impatient to win her trust.

She angled her head to peer up at him. “This is a new experience, isn’t it?”

“Completely, for both of us.” The first of many.

He let her subside onto the mattress, then climbed under the blankets with her.

“You are warm, Elijah.”

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and drew her closer. “I’m on fire.”

In less than a minute, he’d ignited his lady’s passions too. He denied himself the pleasure of covering her, needing the check on his self-restraint to withstand another spate of kissing from his lover as they lay facing each other on their sides.

“I will forever associate tongues and paintbrushes when I’m around you, Elijah. I want to paint you.”

“You have.” He dipped his head and nuzzled her breast. “You shall.”

She hiked a leg over his hips and pulled herself closer. “I mean I want to apply paint to your naked body, put colors on you everywhere—” Elijah felt a soft, female hand trace down his midline, then close around his shaft.

“Wicked, passionate, imaginative woman.” He rolled to his back and prepared to be tortured. Of course she would want to see him. Male artists could inspect themselves in the mirror or gawk at models when they were working with nudes.

And yet, she surprised him by straddling him instead.

“We can do it this way, can’t we? I’ve studied those exotic prints in Louisa’s library, and last night—”

Marriage to her was going to be a scantily clad, glorious, exhausting undertaking.

Elijah treated himself to the feel of her breasts against his palms. “We can make love any way you please, Genevieve.” Though, pray God, let it be soon.

“I like that.” She closed her eyes and let her head fall back, her braid tickling Elijah’s thighs. He pulled it over her shoulder and dabbed the end around her right nipple.

“Do you like that too?”

She opened her eyes, expression puzzled. “I like your hands better. I love your hands, whether they’re sketching, painting, holding William, or touching me.”

He trapped her fingers and brought them to his mouth. He would take her to Paris. He would take her there as often as she liked, and stay for weeks at a time. When he might have shared these sentiments with her, she tipped forward as if to kiss him, and Elijah thwarted her by taking a luscious nipple into his mouth.

“E-li-jah Har-ri-son.” Her hand wrapped around the back of his head as he drew on her, and the heat of her sex so very near his cock burned at his self-restraint.

Because words were moving beyond his reach, he anchored a hand on Jenny’s derriere and urged her down. She obliged, her damp, warm, lovely sex sighing onto his erection.

“That… That makes me want to kiss you, Elijah.”

He switched breasts rather than tell her what it made him want to do. Without him asking, she started moving on him, a slow, wet drag and return that stole his breath and sent arousal spiraling out through his body.

She would not describe herself as a virgin, though to Elijah she was more deserving of consideration than if she had been. He gave up the pleasure of her nipple in his mouth and watched her face.

“Genevieve.” He had to say her name, so absorbed was she in the stroke of her sex over his cock. “Genevieve, take me inside you.”

Jenny stared at him, as if she groped for the sense of his words.

Elijah took her hand and wrapped it around his cock. “Take me inside you, now. Please.”

He fitted his hand around hers and positioned himself at the entrance to her body, then nudged up and went still. Her expression was fierce, aroused, and in some regard holy, like Lawrence’s rendering of the dark prince. In a dim corner of Elijah’s awareness, he wanted to paint her thus, poised on the brink of accepting both him and the pleasure that was her due, and yet he knew such an image exceeded his talent by leaps.

She snugged her body down enough to start their joining. “There? Like that?”

“Exactly like that. Kiss me.”

She folded forward carefully, close enough that Elijah could fill one hand with the abundance of her breast and sink the other into the hair at her nape. “Like this.”

He synchronized his tongue and his cock in slow undulations, until her body was moving smoothly over him, taking him deeper and deeper into bliss, deeper and deeper into her.

He felt her arousal welling up, felt her slowing her movements as if she’d cower away from the pleasure—and that he could not allow.

“Be brave, Genevieve. Be greedy and strong. Be mine.” He took control of their joining, anchoring an arm low on her back, thrusting into her hard, and watching her face.

“Elijah—” She arched her back, her throat gleaming white in the firelight as her body gave itself up to pleasure. Elijah had to close his eyes lest the sight of her surrender send him past control. In some ways, that decision was ill advised, for he could feel her fisting around him, feel the one, endless spasm that wrenched a groan from her throat, and feel when desire eased its grip on her and let her sprawl in a boneless heap on his chest.

A boneless, satisfied heap.

For long minutes, he contented himself with stroking her hair, her back, her derriere. His passion was not sated, and yet he was content. As he drew a queen of hearts on her back with the tip of her braid, Elijah debated telling Genevieve Windham that he loved her.

Such a declaration might be better saved for their wedding night, or for when he presented her with an engagement ring. Or perhaps—

Along with the lust throbbing gently in his veins, along with affection for the lady in his arms and pride in her fearless passion, a quiet thread of joy coursed through Elijah.

He’d take her to Flint Hall after the New Year—after he’d been officially admitted to the Academy—and tell her there that he loved her, for even a stubborn, idiot man who’d wandered in a wilderness of pride for ten years was entitled—was required—to show his bride off to his family.

Jenny shifted on his chest, nuzzled his sternum, then settled again.

He was a better man for loving her, he was a better artist for loving her, and he would tell her that too when he brought her to their home.

“Elijah?”

“Love?”

She kissed him and peered at him with the sort of intensity Elijah suspected had to do with questions a newly engaged woman found difficult to keep to herself.

How many children did he want?

A special license or St. George’s or a wedding in the Morelands chapel?

Would they reside with his family at Flint Hall, or live for a time at Bernward Manor?

When would he speak to her father?

She brushed his hair back from his forehead, a wifely caress if Elijah had ever felt one.

“When I go to Paris, I will miss my family, but I will also miss… this.” She kissed him again, sweetly, gently. “I will miss you so very much.”

Elijah’s hands stopped moving on her back; his lungs stopped drawing in air.

When she went to Paris…

When she went to Paris, exactly as planned, as if this night, as if he, meant nothing more than a passing whim.

As if he’d completely misconstrued her words, her glances, her intentions, and seen them through a haze of lust and longing that had obliterated his judgment.

But not his pride.

Anger welled up, at her, at himself, at Paris, and following immediately after, like an undertow follows a wave, despair surged—for himself and for her. He did not want to go to Paris, much less in the company of a woman whose view of their dealings was radically different from his own.

Jenny would go to Paris, though he was coming to suspect something more than artistic compulsion drove her there, perhaps something she did not understand herself.

For the past ten years, he had wanted to go home, and home he would go.

* * *

Allowing intimacies with Denby had been stupid and disappointing but not tragic. Marriage to Denby would have been tragic. These thoughts, along with both satisfaction and loss, coursed through Jenny as she sprawled on Elijah’s chest.

Denby had been a selfish, inept boy, just as Jenny had been a selfish, inept girl, while Elijah was… a man, a skilled, generous, passionate, caring, talented…

Jenny very much feared that intimacies with Elijah Harrison were going to have consequences tragic for her, though she couldn’t quite fathom how. She could still feel him, feel the pleasurable fullness of him inside her body, and suspected she’d feel him in her heart for far longer than was prudent.

“Elijah?” She could not say these things to him, and yet she wanted to say something.

“Love?”

The sensation of him using her braid like a paintbrush on her back was peculiar and soothing. He gathered her closer, and she kissed him, kissed him with all the regret and longing in her, with all the sorrow and loss too.

“When I go to Paris, I will miss my family, but I will also miss… this.” She kissed him again, because the missing had already started. “I will miss you so very much.”

His hands went still on her back, and Jenny’s heart stopped beating.

He smoothed her hair back from her forehead and studied her, guardedness replacing the tenderness in his eyes. “You said you wanted it to be me, Genevieve.”