Chapter 45
Chapter Forty-Five
84 brOOK STREET, LONDON - DECEMBER 18. 1816
LEE
A lust-filled tension found a home in my spine, settling low and simmering. It carried through the drive home. It remained as we stepped into the house. It accompanied me as I trailed Charlotte up the stairs to check on a soundly sleeping Leo, splayed atop an equally unconscious Jack. It followed all the way until I heard the click of our bedroom door latching. Then and only then, did it break.
Hours of anticipation, weeks of desperation, months of longing, years of celibacy—it all washed over me, a tidal wave threatening to sweep me out to sea. I was going to drown in Charlotte, or without her. It wasn’t clear. It didn’t matter. Her lips were the only things that mattered, had ever, would ever again matter.
And if the sweet whines and disoriented, needy tugs to the buttons of my waistcoat were any indication, my wife felt the same. She managed quite a few, her dexterous fingers working tirelessly between us to undress me. Patience wasn’t my wife’s strong suit, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise when, quite without warning, she grabbed the edges of the garment and tugged, sending a button or two pinging to the floor. That was certainly the most arousing moment of my entire life.
In a pathetic bid to keep from embarrassing myself, I spun her around, stripping her of my great coat to reach the line of buttons fastening her gown. Five delicate circles lined her spine, wrapped in the same gold thread of her dress. They were all that separated me from my wife. And likely additional layers, but those were a problem for future Lee.
The temptation to grab and yank was there, certainly, and stronger than any urge I’d had thus far. But when I dropped a kiss to the delicate freckle at the nape of her neck, she shuddered. And that shudder gave me ideas.
Impossibly slowly, I worked the topmost button free. Pleased to have revealed more skin and another tiny freckle, I dragged my finger along the new landscape. Charlotte swallowed. A second button earned me a clenched fist. The third revealed chemise or petticoat or whatever ridiculous underthings she wore. To make amends for the absence of porcelain flesh, I received a whine of my name.
“Yes, darling?”
“Do you suppose you might hurry this along?” she asked, irritation swirling with the lust in her tone.
“Hurry what along?”
She spun around, glaring at me before grabbing a fistful of my shirt and tugging my lips down to hers. Her lips and tongue were greedy, and in seconds, my entire objective was lost. One hand found her waist, the other the side of her neck, tangling curls I’d already mussed.
As quickly as the kiss started, she pulled away, leaving my lips chasing pathetically after hers. She hovered, just out of reach, smirking at my own needy whine. “We’ve had months to build the anticipation, Lee. I’m finished with slow.”
It took my lust-drugged brain a moment to grasp her meaning. When it dawned at last, I could not have held back my groan for the world.
My hand still on her waist spun her back around. In no time at all, I was yanking her gown to pool on the floor between us.
“That’s better,” she purred.
The ties on the petticoat protested my rough treatment, the sharp snap of stitches popping carrying over our harsh breaths. The sound was heavy and significant with implication.
Still, I had a directive from my lovely, imperious wife, and I half-heartedly shoved the material down to join its friend on the floor. It caught between my waist where it was pressed in tight against her bottom without my permission or notice. That obstruction was irrelevant when I was faced with the challenge of stays.
My fingers, too large, fumbled on the lacings in a doltish refusal to obey my head’s commands. I had the rather inane wonder what sort of undergarments she’d worn with that dress she’d donned the night we met. The one that offered up her luscious breasts for adoration.
At last, I managed to free her from that layer too.
“Well done.”
I rolled my eyes in response to the praise, even as I bit back a grin at her satirical commentary. The ties of her delicate, threadbare chemise snapped under my fingers. It was her own doing. I wouldn’t apologize for my responses to her provocation.
With a gentle grip, I turned her around. Then, gentleness abandoned me. My fingers twisted in her curls, dragging her onto her toes and up to my lips with bruising intensity.
Far from intimidated, Charlotte gave as much as she received. One tiny hand caught in my hair and yanked me down farther when she dropped to flat feet. The other worked ineffectively at the fall of my breeches. I sacrificed the hand on her waist to assist in her efforts.
“Lee,” she panted when she drew away for breath.
“Hmm,” I answered into the delicate skin of her jaw.
“Breeches off.”
“Not as easy as it seems, is it?”
“Smug and self-satisfied are not attractive qualities,” she retorted.
I bit back a smile, abandoning her collarbone in favor of following her instructions in a timely fashion, lest she decide not to bestow her favors.
I divested them quickly, tossing my shirt away at the same time. Task completed, I reached for her again.
She shook her head, instead giving me a gentle shove toward the bed. Charlotte’s hand, still pressed in the center of my chest, shoved just a bit harder, directing me to sit.
No sooner had I done so than my arms and lap were full of my lovely, lavender-scented wife.
“Hello.”
“Hello,” she replied distractedly. Her hands dragged freely across my torso, brushing across scarred flesh. My chest tightened at the realization—not that she was touching my damaged skin—but that I had forgotten its existence entirely.
Through the months, I had grown so used to her appreciative glances, her nonchalant brushes, her purposeful touches, that when we were alone, I only considered the scars in so much as her touches there felt different.
As wonderful as that realization was, sentimental blubbering was not what either of us wanted for tonight.
Taking charge, I dragged her lips back to mine and pulled her with me as I laid back on the bed.
She was a tiny little thing, my wife. Sprawled entirely atop me, it was clear how delicate she truly was, how dangerous our race to London had been.
Shaking that horrifying thought away, I caught her waist and tugged her up my frame. We’d managed to work this position out in the months before she gave birth, when everything was uncomfortable for her. And… I rather liked it.
Charlotte’s hand dropped down in the center of my chest, halting my efforts.
“What’s wrong?”
“I want to try something…” She trailed off with a raised brow. I hadn’t the faintest idea what she wanted to try. But it was Charlotte, naked Charlotte, and I couldn’t fathom anything she could want that I wouldn’t.
“By all means,” I said, flopping back. “Where do you want me?”
“Right there,” she said, something sultry in her tone.
And then, then, she slid her leg over my waist and sat back on my thighs. Her entrance, lovely and damp, right beneath my painfully hard cock.
Christ, I loved this woman.
CHARLOTTE
Lee was wrecked, his pupils blown so wide his eyes were black. And I hadn’t even done anything.
Watching this man, this massive, powerful, damaged, gentle man fall to pieces at the thought of my touch was a heady thing. Arousal and interest settled low in my belly. It was a familiar sensation around my husband but unfamiliar in the context of this activity.
One hand fisted in the sheets, tangling and untangling, while I gathered my nerve. He seemed to sense my need for control in this and was perfectly willing to allow me to set the pace.
The cool fingers of his free hand traced my side, dragging across the unattractive marks our son left behind.
“What?” he asked. My expression must have revealed my discomfort because he continued. “You flinched.”
“There are marks, I don’t…” Want you to touch them remained unsaid.
“Oh, well, as I am a perfect specimen…” he retorted, his grin sardonic.
“That’s different,” I protested. “You were injured being heroic.”
He hummed, most likely biting back a protest of his heroism. “You were injured bringing our child into this world. There is nothing more heroic, and nothing more beautiful.”
With that, he rose up to kiss one mark, then another, and another. There was no difference in sensation, but the sight… The vision of Lee worshiping curves and lines I hadn’t yet come to terms with—it was enough to overwhelm. There was no warning before the tears came, a passive process in a way they had never been before. They merely seeped from my eyes, flowing freely.
Sensing my overflowing sentiment, he dragged himself back up to kiss away the stray tears.
“What do you want tonight, Charlotte?”
And that might have been the easiest answer I’d ever given. “You. Us. As one.”
Before he could distract me with his earnest gaze and soft words, I dragged his lips to mine. Lee responded the way he always did, fully, completely, without hesitation. He kissed with his entire body. It was the same way he loved me.
His deft hands worked around me and then inside me. He set about stripping me of sense—left to clutch desperately at broad shoulders and a muscular chest as he readied me for him.
Reluctantly, I separated our lips and wandering hands before urging his torso back to the bed and dragging my splayed fingers down the intriguing planes of his chest. Carefully, I pressed my palms to his abdominals to rise above him.
His hands found my thighs, offering eager assistance. Lee held my weight easily as I sank down, down, down on his hard shaft with a sigh.
Whether Lee surged up or I pulled his lips to mine, I neither knew nor cared. The entirety of my being was focused on his sinful lips and more sinful cock. Gently, tentatively, he rocked up into me. And I knew nothing but pleasure and bubbling joy.
Lee dragged his lips away, cupping my cheek to prevent me from following. “Is it all right?” he whispered, so quiet I wasn’t entirely certain I understood the words. But the sentiment was so clear in his eyes.
“Yes,” I nodded.
He melted in relief, his hand catching the back of my neck as he fell back against the pillows, tongue tangling with mine.
With the other hand clenching on my waist, he helped me set a rhythm that suited us both.
Thanks to Lee, I wasn’t a stranger to pleasure. I could sense it building low in my spine as I worked above him while his hands traced curves and his hips met mine.
In the delicate firelight, I—we—discovered something entirely new. Somewhere in the space between us, stars were formed and lived and died and were reborn. They swirled, orbiting around us, bathing us in twinkling light.
Lee was quiet and gentle. His eyes caught mine with determination. He’d never said as much to me, but I knew he would abide nothing but breathtaking, earth-shattering pleasure. Our bed, our little slice of paradise, had no room for self-doubt or pain. The luxurious, sensual joy burned everything else away.
Somewhere in the midst of our heaven, Lee found a place inside me that had my toes curling and my breath catching.
“There!” One of us breathed it, whether it was him or me or the stars was anyone’s guess. And white-hot bliss danced along my spine.
Seconds, minutes, hours later the pleasure began to recede and awareness dawned once more.
Sense returned slowly, around the time Lee pulled me against him with a kiss to my forehead. I answered with one to the scar over his heart.
“Charlotte?”
I hummed, still incapable of actual words.
“I… you enjoyed that, I believe?”
That was enough to startle me up a bit to meet his gaze. “It was perfect.”
“Good,” he replied, trying to tug me back down.
I resisted. “Did you not find it so?”
A smile tugged at the corner of his lips as he caught a tangled curl between his thumb and forefinger, twirling it thoughtfully.
“Perfect is too inadequate a word,” he assured me. “But you said in the past, it was not always enjoyable. I merely wanted to be sure.”
“With you, everything is different.”
His smile was bright and accompanied by a breathless laugh. I finally allowed him to tug me down for a kiss.
When we broke apart he added, “Good, because as soon as I regain feeling in my extremities, I’d like to do that again—if you’re amenable, of course.”
“I am. Amenable. Very amenable.” I curled my head on his chest.
A quiet cry from the other room interrupted our basking. I knew Leo well enough by now to know it was his general dissatisfied with life cry and nothing more serious.
My husband stretched with a slight groan before rolling out of bed and grabbing his banyan. He picked up a nightdress off the floor and tossed it to me with a teasing smile.
No sooner had I managed to convince my limbs to cooperate in pulling the garment on, than Lee returned with our son bundled in his arms.
“Well, I frightened Jack beyond his wits. We’ll need to increase his pay to compensate for the years I took off his life.”
Between chuckles, I asked, “What did you do to that lad?”
“He thought someone had come to steal the boy. Was ready to stab me with a fire poker.”
“That should more than double his wages.” I reached up for Leo. My husband deposited our son safely into my arms as he slid into bed.
Lee curled around us, letting me use him as a pillow while I rubbed our son’s belly in the way that usually soothed.
Leo settled a bit, grabbing his foot in both hands and trying to drag it into his mouth.
With a chuckle, Lee stole the foot away, placing it back beside its brother and offering his finger for inspection instead.
“I don’t know what I did to deserve you two,” Lee murmured.
“It is strange, I was thinking the exact same thing.”
He considered us for a moment. “Perhaps we should just enjoy it, rather than trying to find an explanation for it.”
“I quite like the sound of that.”
Course of action decided, Lee dropped his usual kiss on my forehead and another one on his son’s dark head. And together, our little family drifted off to sleep.