“You do?”

He nodded. “You like this.” He rubbed both thumbs across her nipples. She gasped. “Don’t you?”

She didn’t seem to want to answer as long as he kept doing that, so he stilled his hands and said, “Edie.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice coming in a little pant. “I like that.” He bent down and . . . aye, she liked that, too. She pretty much liked everything, it turned out, except when he licked her under her chin. And she actually started scolding him when he licked her armpit.

“I love it,” he said thickly. “You smell so good, like essence of Edie, my favorite scent in the world.”

“Ugh!” she cried, pulling away. “Stop that!”

But an experiment needs to be thorough, so he just kept licking and kissing and nibbling his way down her stomach. Then he pushed her legs apart, giving one throbbing second to the memory of her legs straddling her cello before lowering his mouth onto her plump, tender flesh.

He’d kissed her here before. But he’d done it to make sure she was ready for him. The road map wasn’t about him.

It was about her.

Every time Edie felt that little pulse of embarrassment that threatened to make her think too much, she let the champagne drag her back into a floating place. What Gowan was doing felt so good that her breath came sobbing from her chest. And then he pushed her knees back, which made her so vulnerable and oh God, he could see everything, but he didn’t seem . . .

He was growling, deep in his throat, and when she took a quick glance, she could see that his private part was still standing up. So he desired her, even though he was doing that. For the first time, it made her feel empty, as if she needed him to fill her up. So she pulled at his shoulders, but he wouldn’t pay any attention to her.

And all the time a feeling was building in her legs until she was moving them restlessly as if a fever was coming over her. Gowan ran a hand over her stomach, farther down . . . put one broad finger into her.

She shrieked and arched her back. It wasn’t enough, so she sobbed and begged him, but then he slipped in another finger and did something with his tongue and her hands fell away from his shoulders altogether.

A moment later a flash of heat rolled her down and under, as if she’d been caught in a tidal wave: utterly engulfing, magical, terrifying, all at the same time. She heard herself crying out, her voice guttural and hoarse, and even that frightened her, a little.

But there was no avoiding it, no stopping it. The feeling swept up from her toes and dragged her in a storm of sweet pain that her body welcomed. When she broke free, she was panting, her face was wet with tears.

Gowan’s fingers slipped from her, and she began shaking again. She wanted more than that. Without thinking, she sat up and reached for him. There was a song in her veins and she wanted to give him the same.

She caught sight of his face.

Thirty-two

“What?” she whispered, realizing that her fingers were trembling as if lightning had forked through her. She withdrew her hand. “Did I do something wrong?”

His face was dark. The silvery feeling drained from her body as quickly as it had come.

“You came,” he said, his voice clipped.

Edie drew her knees to the side and managed to sit up. “Ah . . . yes?” It seemed such a paltry word for what had just happened. She could feel pulses in parts of her body where she had never felt them before.

His jaw tightened. “Was it your first time?”

Edie froze, realizing her mistake. The champagne . . . the pleasure . . . it had made her recklessly abandoned. She nodded.

First disbelief, then fury, ripped across this face. His words came as hard as hammer blows. “Then what happened when you supposedly came the other”—he paused—“three times?”

Her mind was spinning from the champagne, and the only solution she could come up with was to pull the sheet over her head. Instead she drew it up so her breasts were covered. “I just thought—I can explain.”

“Do that.” He folded his arms. “Explain to me why you’ve been pretending that I pleased you.”

The problem was that she couldn’t quite remember what her reasoning had been, but she hadn’t known him then. Not the way she did now, after spending hours and days confined in a cramped carriage, listening to him patiently dealing with problem after problem. “I didn’t mean it that way,” she said, finally.

“You didn’t mean it that way? How else could you explain what you did, other than to say that you lied to me in the moment when I thought we were closest? When I thought—” He broke off.

“It hurt,” she said, stumbling into an explanation. But she couldn’t put the words together. She tucked the sheet tighter around her breasts, feeling tears press at the back of her throat. “This time was different.”

“This time you were drunk.” His voice was utterly even. “God, Edie, of all things I wouldn’t have thought you were a liar.”

“I’m not!”

“I knew something was wrong. No wonder I damn well felt as if I didn’t own you.”

Her breath caught at this, and she recovered some presence of mind. “You do not own me,” she said, feeling her own temper spark. “What we do in bed has no bearing on the fact that I am my own person.”

“So I’m facing a lifetime of asking my wife whether she really liked it or whether she was just acting—being as she’s her own person.”

“That’s cruel.” It went against Edie’s nature to argue. She wasn’t good at fighting back. Instead, she resorted to the method by which she’d learned to negotiate her father’s and Layla’s fraught union. “If you would just be reasonable—”

Gowan actually growled at her, lunging from the bed and walking away to the darkest part of the room to stand with his back to her, clearly fighting to control his rage. “I hate it when you use that tone of voice with me.”

“What voice?”

“That sugary, peacemaking tone. You’re condescending, and if there’s anyone in this room who should be condescended to, it’s you.” He swung about. “You lied to me, and I hate liars.”

“I was just—I was a virgin!”

“So?”

“I panicked!” she cried. “It hurt, and you just kept going on, and I didn’t know how to make you stop.”

His head snapped back, and he made a sound as if he’d been slugged in the gut. “Now you’re telling me that I forced myself on you?”

“No!” But she was so rattled by his snarl that the right words didn’t come. Her eyes fell under his glare. “I just couldn’t . . . I kept thinking about what you expected, and that I couldn’t be what you wanted in a wife. I was failing,” she said, saying it because it had to be said. “You were trying so hard, and I tried, too, I swear I did. I didn’t want you to think—”

“I was trying so hard, like some rutting animal?” His eyes blazed at her. “You thought I’d prefer to be deceived than told the truth, no matter how difficult it was? What you’re saying is that when I failed you in bed, you didn’t think I could shoulder the truth.” His jaw flexed again. “Bloody hell, Edie. How could you think that of me?”