The Temporary Wife by Mary Balogh Page A

right to guess that knowing and experiencing were two quite different things. She could never have imagined the utter carnality of the sensation.
    And then she discovered—during several minutes of shocked amazement—that in fact she had not known at all. Only about penetration. She had had no inkling of the fact that penetration was only the beginning. He pumped in and out of her with hard, smooth strokes until the ache his hands on her breasts had already created became raw pain—pain that was not really pain but for which there was no other more suitable word in her vocabulary. And certainly it was beyond bearing and growing more so with every inward stroke.
    "Oh," she said suddenly, alarmed and amazed as she pressed her hands to his buttocks in an attempt to hold him still and deep and as inner muscles she had still not consciously discovered clenched convulsively. "Oh."
    He answered her mute appeal instantly. He pressed hard into her tightness and held there. "My God," he murmured against the side of her head. "My God!"
    Something that she thought might well be death beckoned and she followed without a struggle. Whatever it was closed darkly about her and felt wonderful beyond belief. Nothingness. Total, blissful nothingness.
    She was half aware of his moving again, faster and harder than before. She was half aware of a flood of heat deep inside as he sighed and held still again and relaxed his full weight down onto her. Death was not after all to be feared, she thought foolishly and very fuzzily. Death was the fulfillment of all that was most desirable.
    She slept. She grumbled only very halfheartedly when the wonderful heat and weight that bore her down into the mattress was lifted away from her and far lighter blankets covered her instead. Yes, she thought with the last thread of consciousness, there was a method vastly superior to counting sheep.
    And love was not always sweet and gentle. And love was not always love.

    The road had dried sufficiently by the following morning to make travel possible. And the landlord at the inn where they had stayed the night had proved quite correct in his prediction. The sun shone from a sky that was dotted prettily but sparsely with fluffy white clouds. Fields and hedgerows looked washed clean in the morning air.
    It was the perfect day for a homecoming.
    The Marquess of Staunton gazed moodily and sightlessly out through the window on his side of the carriage. Damn and blast, he was thinking, verbalizing the words in his head with silent venom.
    She had actually been blushing when she had joined him in the inn dining room for breakfast. She had looked like the stereotypical bride the morning after her wedding night. She had even been looking almost pretty—not that he had spent a great deal of time looking into her face. He had addressed himself to his breakfast without being in any way aware of what he ate beyond the fact that it was inordinately greasy.
    What the devil had possessed him last night? He had felt not one glimmering of sexual interest in her from the moment of spying her in the shadows of the salon where she had waited to be interviewed to the moment during which she had started to talk about sheep and Wales and lumpy mattresses. Not one iota of a glimmering.
    And yet he had consummated their union during the very first night of their marriage—and had done so with great enthusiasm and more than usual satisfaction. He had fallen asleep almost immediately after lifting himself off her and had slept like the proverbial baby until dawn.
    What if he had got her with child? It had been almost his first thought on waking up— after he had rejected the notion of waking her up and doing it again with her. A pregnancy would complicate matters considerably. Besides, children of his own body were the very last things he wanted. The very idea of impregnating a woman made him shudder. He had always been meticulous about choosing bedfellows who knew how to look after