Page 97 of The Masterful Mr. Montague

And sank down as, gripping her hips, he drew her down.

They came together on a sensual sigh.

In a moment of aching togetherness. Of acute, unfettered, unrestrained intimacy.

Lids falling, they savored the inexpressible delight.

Absorbed the welling pleasure.

Then they let the surging, driving need take them. Have them, capture them, whip them on.

And from somewhere amid all the passion and the fire and the heat and the urgency, from beneath their sensual desperation, joy, effervescent and unstoppable, unquenchable, bubbled up.

And filled them.

Merging with the sweeping tide of their sensual pleasure, with their driving need for completion, that joy, brilliant and acute, wound and twined and added another dimension to their experienced joining.

And opened their senses to another dimension of delight.

Penelope felt like she was close to bursting with the welling, surging, geysering emotions; never had they been this strong, this powerful, this glittering and engaging.

Dragging her lips from Barnaby’s, she tipped her head back, then, all but bubbling with that swirling delight, she framed his face between her hands, found his heavy-lidded eyes with her gaze, and gasped, “The bed.”

She didn’t have to ask twice. In three swift strides, he was by the bed’s side, then he tipped them both down.

They bounced once, then sank into the billows of their featherbed, and she reached for him as he drew her fully beneath him; she wriggled and then arched, and on a glorious gasp took him in, took him deep as, on a guttural groan, he thrust powerfully into her.

Then they rode the racing tide of their uninhibited, unfettered passions.

When the peak appeared before them, they raced on without check, in concert, together, in unshakeable accord.

Up and over the sensual cliff, and into the void they flew.

Striving to reach their sensual sun.

Hands gripping, fingers twined, bodies cleaving, hearts beating as one they stretched, touched, and let the implosion take them. Let ecstasy break them, fragment, and remake them.

As it had so many times before, but this time, in that infinite instant of searing togetherness, of emotional as well as physical melding, from under heavy lids their eyes met, held, and they both saw, both knew, both sensed the subtle addition that extra joy had brought to them—to their union.

Another strand woven into the emotional rope that linked them.

Another element of their love.

An additional strength that would hold them together over the years to come.

Heavy-lidded, passion-spent, their gazes held for an instant longer, then she let her lids fall, felt a smile—full and open—curve her lips.

Felt its mate curving his lips as he touched them to hers.

And they let go and sank into the glory, into the bliss that was theirs to claim.

Later, they shifted and settled amid the rumpled sheets, wrapped in each other’s arms. His head on the pillows, Penelope slumped against him, her head resting in the hollow beneath his shoulder, Barnaby stared up at the shadowed ceiling and, without conscious intention, found his mind sorting through all he’d felt. All he’d sensed.

All that had come to be, settling like an additional layer of experience between them.

Raising one hand, he stroked the rumpled silk of her dark hair. He knew she wasn’t yet asleep. “You’re happy, aren’t you?” She’d grown more settled, more assured and content, over the last weeks. “Happy with the way things are working out.”

It was that happiness he’d sensed running through their loving.