Patrick’s hand found its way back to the generous undercurve of Sophie’s breast. She gasped and her head fell back; Patrick pulled her head toward his for an aching kiss, and another, and another…. Somehow they found themselves flat on the bed again, and this time when Patrick pulled up Sophie’s gown she did naught but shiver with anticipation.

He rose for a moment and came back without clothes.

“Oh my,” Sophie said, her eyes wide. “You’re … you’re without a stitch!”

Patrick’s eyes lit with laughter. “So are you.”

Sophie looked down at her body in confusion. It didn’t feel like her own body anymore, and she hadn’t really marked the disappearance of her garments. The pink creamy expanse of her skin had become a maze of sensations and hot aches, unlike anything she had known or dreamed of. As she watched, Patrick’s hand lazed its way over her breast and down her belly, and then Sophie couldn’t watch anymore.

She looked at him instead. Even as Patrick’s hands wrought magic, and his lips made her shake and tremble, she looked at the parts of his body she could see.

A small voice broke the erotic haze in the bedroom. “This isn’t going to work,” Sophie said precisely. “I’m afraid that we are not appropriately, ah, sized.”

Patrick desperately pushed back waves of lust. He was hanging on to control by a thread, by a glimmer of a thread. Somehow he found himself propped on his elbows above the rosy, yet frightened face of his own Sophie.

“You have to trust me, sweetheart.” He brushed his lips back and forth against hers, persuading and cherishing, all at once.

Sophie gasped, but managed to reply, “In this instance, I think I am a better judge of my capabilities.”

“Logic,” Patrick murmured. “Logic is for widgeons. God made our bodies to go together, Sophie.”

She felt his treacherous persuasion between her thighs; every inch of her was screaming for him to continue. Her mind raced. Patrick kissed her eyes, tenderly pressing them closed, letting his body continue its silent seduction, an urgent, infamous demand.

Breathless, Sophie opened her lips.

“It is true,” Patrick murmured against her lips, “that it doesn’t feel very good for women, the first time.”

But Sophie was past caring.

Her arms clenched around his neck and her body arched up against his in an unconscious plea that broke through his last reserves like fire hitting a thatched roof. He took her mouth and her body in the same breath, catching Sophie’s cry in his throat, staying absolutely still for a moment.

“I’m sorry … I’m sorry.”

Patrick really did sound sorry, Sophie thought, her mind drawn away from the sharp pain that accompanied his entrance. So she concentrated on the rustling, tender words that he whispered into her hair, and her ears, and against her throat.