Love Everlasting by Flora Speer Page A

flared impatiently in his loins would soon be quenched.
He was more than ready; he was fast becoming desperate.
    Telling himself to wait, to take her along
with him on his ecstatic journey, he caressed her soft abdomen and
allowed his hand to trail onward to the side of her thigh. Julianna
sighed and smiled at him.
    She glanced downward, following the motion of
his steadily stroking hand. Her smile vanished. Her eyes grew huge.
Royce heard her gulp.
    “My lord,” she said in a strangled voice,
“when you said you were afflicted with a masculine ailment, I
thought you meant an insufficiency.”
    “I never said I had an ailment,” he began,
but she cut him off with a horrified exclamation.
    “You should have warned me that you suffer
from an aberration.”
    “What aberration? What are you talking
about?”
    “That.” She gestured toward his rigid shaft.
“You are a giant, my lord.”
    Royce saw how she set her jaw. He saw her
throat move as she swallowed again. To his confusion, he realized
that she was gathering her courage to endure whatever humiliation
he chose to inflict upon her. When she lifted her worried gaze to
his, the truth burst upon him with all the power of a
revelation.
    “I am not going to harm you,” he said.
“You’ve had two elderly husbands, one of whom was apparently
impotent, or close to it. You’ve never seen a fully erect male
organ before, have you?”
    “Please, my lord, let me go.”
    “I cannot release you. Not now.” He moved
over her, holding her down. “Heaven knows, I didn’t want to rush
you, but I can’t stop.”
    While she tried to push him away he
positioned himself between her thighs. He saw the grimace of fear
on her face as he came against her and his heart smote him.
    “Julianna, look at me. Look into my eyes and
know that I do not want to hurt you. But I have to do this.” His
words sounded more like an order than the plea he meant them to be,
but Royce had reached the end of his tether. He could feel how warm
her most private place was and he had to be there. Had to be deep
inside her. Immediately. He could wait no longer.
    “Yes, my lord.”
    She ceased struggling and lay limp and
passive while he began to push himself into her. He felt a pang of
guilt for what he was doing. Was this the way her other husbands
had treated her, commanding her obedience in bed? Duty-bound to
possess her, Royce regarded her with compassion, and with a dawning
admiration that was almost affection.
    She’d been right about one thing; he was a
large man and her body was remarkably tight. She flinched as he
entered her. Two old men, he reminded himself; old and feeble, not
as large or firm as they’d been in their youth, and neither one
trying to be kind to her. Not that he was being particularly kind,
but he and Julianna both understood what needed to be done.
    He restrained his eagerness, trying as best
he could to advance slowly, for he believed he was beginning to
understand her past experiences. Julianna, wed to one man or
another since she was fourteen, at thirty years of age remained a
near virgin. Her memories of bedding clearly were not happy ones.
But she was not without passion. She had responded to his first
caresses and she had enjoyed his kisses.
    “You are in pain, my lord.”
    Her pitying gaze was fixed on his face and
Royce knew that he probably did look as if he was in pain. He was
trying so hard to be gentle with her, not to ram himself into her
and seize the release for which all his senses were clamoring.
    In that instant when Julianna, partially
impaled on the hard shaft of his desire, voiced concern for him,
Royce knew he could never just take from her. If they were to have
any hope of a peaceable marriage, he must do as he had intended
when he first took her into his arms. He must teach her the ways of
pleasure, even if it meant foregoing his own.
    “Will you trust me?” he asked, holding
himself perfectly still. “Just for a few moments more?”
    “Yes,