Chapter Nineteen #4
After the rush of concerned friends and family was gone, the chamber seemed strangely still.
Wynter concentrated on feeding her husband, who could only eat about half of the bowl.
She ate the other half, a warming and nourishing soup.
She then helped Gage lay back down, tucking him in with a blanket that was surprisingly nice. Wynter ran her hands over it.
“I wonder where they found this?” she asked. “It is quite expensive.”
Gage lay there, half-lidded, gazing up at her. “It belongs to Varro,” he said. “The man travels like a king.”
Wynter grinned. “He is a nice man, isn’t he?”
“The very best.”
“He loves you a great deal.”
“And I love him.” Gage paused a moment, watching her. “And do you know what else?”
“What?”
“I love you, too.”
The mirth drained from Wynter’s face, looking at him with an expression bordering on tears. “That is something I never thought I would hear you say,” she whispered. “You know that the feeling is very mutual.”
“I know,” he said, reaching out to take her hand.
“I think I have always loved you but I had pushed you, and everything else in Northumberland, out of my mind when I was banished. But last night, when I believed I would not see the morning, I told Brian that I did not even think about you over the past six years because to have brought your memory into the vocation I had chosen was disrespectful. I should not remember Wynter de Thorington as I’m cutting an enemy into pieces.
I was no longer worthy to think of you, if that makes sense.
It was not because I did not want to – it was because I should not do it. ”
Wynter grew serious. “That shows that you respected the young girl you used to know,” she said. “To me, that represents a great deal of love that you should think so highly of me. You may have thought I was an annoying pest but, deep down, you held me in high regard.”
He thought on that before a smile creased his lips. “You’re right,” he said. “It does. I had not considered it that way.”
He kissed her hand as she leaned over and kissed him on the forehead, on the lips. It was a delightfully lingering kiss, but she pulled back too soon. He frowned.
“Why did you do that?” he asked.
“Do what?”
“Kiss me and then leave me? You are my wife now. I demand you kiss me until I tell you to stop.”
Wynter burst into soft laughter. “God’s bones, Gage,” she said. “Are you always so demanding?”
He liked listening to her laugh. “And why not?” he said. “I have the most beautiful, clever, and devoted wife in the entire world. Why shouldn’t I want her to kiss me? In fact, that is all we can do tonight, as it will have to be a prelude to better things when I am feeling more like myself.”
She cocked her head. “What better things?”
He wriggled his eyebrows. “Husband and wifely things,” he said. “We should consummate this marriage before we send word to your father because if we do not and he is unhappy with our union, he could have the marriage annulled.”
Wynter gave him a look that suggested she would not allow that, no matter what her father said. “Then why must we wait? I do not understand.”
He was trying not to laugh at what he interpreted as her sweet ignorance. “Because I cannot move very well, my darling,” he said. “I must be able to move in order to make you my wife in body.”
“But I can move.”
“I know you can move, dearest. But I cannot. Do you understand what I am saying?”
Wynter cocked her head thoughtfully. “If you tell me what to do, I can do it for you.”
He cleared his throat at that rather alluring suggestion. Foolish, but alluring. “It is not that easy,” he said. “Have you ever seen animals mate? Dogs? Horses?”
Surprisingly, she wasn’t embarrassed by the subject. Wynter was, if nothing else, pragmatic about the world in general. “I have seen them both,” she said. “The male animal mounts the female from behind. Is that what you intend to do to me?”
He was trying desperately not to laugh at her. “Not at first,” he said. “Men and women usually face each other, with the male on the top.”
“Why can’t I be on the top?”
It wasn’t an outlandish suggestion and he found himself actually considering it. “Do you want to try?” he said. “I can do very little to help you, but I can talk you through it if you wish to try.”
A smile tugged at her lips. “We are married, are we not?” she said.
“Gage, I have waited over half my life for this moment. I did not think it would ever come. Do I want to try? Of course I will try. I will do whatever you tell me to do. Just… do not let this moment be put off if we do not have to.”
He lifted her hand to his lips again, kissing her fingers gently. “Then we can certainly try,” he said. “I would hate to miss a moment, too.”
Wynter brought his hand to her cheek, leaning into it, feeling his warm and rough palm against her tender skin. “Then tell me what to do first.”
He patted her cheek. “Bolt the door,” he told her softly. “We do not need an audience. Then, you will need to disrobe as much as you are comfortable with and you are going to have to help me disrobe, as well.”
Wynter stood up and obediently bolted the chamber door.
The bolt was nearly broken, but it would have to do.
Then she unfastened her belt and set it aside.
The shoes, the hose came off next, followed by the blue woolen garment.
She came down to her shift before she realized that perhaps she wasn’t entirely comfortable being naked in front of Gage.
Not yet, anyway. Truth be told, there was a large part of him that was still a stranger to her, a man she hadn’t seen for years but a man she was now married to.
She was looking forward to continuing the reacquaintance, now on a bold new level.
She went over to him.
“What should I do?” she said.
She was looking at his breeches, the only thing he was wearing. His boots were gone and his tunic and anything he had worn from the waist up was long gone. He gestured to the fastens of his breeches.
“Loosen my ties and pull my breeches down to my knees,” he said.
She knelt beside him, fumbling with the ties. “Shouldn’t I take them all the way off?”
“If you wish.”
Wynter concentrated on unfastening the ties until the breeches were loose enough to pull off his hips, but it was a struggle because the leather had been on his body for days – days of sweat that had made his skin moist and sticky.
She couldn’t get the breeches down easily, so she had to get her hands underneath his buttocks and pull.
Biting her tongue in concentration, she managed to get them down past his hips and onto his thighs.
She had her head down, looking at the breeches and not what they were revealing, until they were down to his knees.
Then she looked up and saw that his large member was already semi-aroused and she quickly looked away.
Gage had been watching her the entire time. When she finally saw his manhood, her cheeks turned scarlet and she averted her gaze. In fact, she wouldn’t look at his body at all as she knelt beside his torso once again.
“There,” she said. “They’re pulled away. What shall I do next?”
She was looking at her lap, probably not at all sure she really wanted to know what to do next. He chuckled softly, reached out, and pulled her to him.
“Come here, darling girl,” he murmured, slipping his hand around the back of her head and pulling her down to him. “Kiss me.”
She did. That was the one thing she could do and not be confronted by his magnificent, but naked, body.
Gage kissed her deeply, hoping it would arouse the passion she thought she had, but had yet to experience.
The mechanics of coupling were one thing and, in her case, curiously spoken of, but the practice was something quite different.
She responded to his kisses, as he’d hoped, and his tongue gently licked at her lips, carefully forcing them open.
She gasped as his tongue licked at hers, but her moment of surprise was followed by acceptance. In little time, she began to respond.
When Gage got her to that point, his mouth left hers and trailed across her cheek to her tender earlobe.
He suckled on a little earlobe, feeling her quiver against him.
He knew he was arousing her lust because her hands, which had so far remained braced against him, were now caressing his flesh.
When her fingers entwined in his hair, he spoke huskily.
“Kiss me,” he whispered. “Kiss me everywhere, like I kissed you.”
Wynter obeyed. She started at his neck, kissing him softly, running her tongue over his flesh, suckling his earlobe as he had done to her.
When he groaned, she was encouraged, so she continued on, kissing his neck, his chest, and his left shoulder.
She worked around the bandages, gaining confidence as she went.
Wynter moved down his chest, to his torso, her warm mouth driving him mad.
He was hugely aroused by the time she reached his waist but, this time, she didn’t turn away.
She faced it as she usually faced things, with practical curiosity.
He was her husband now and his throbbing manroot was part of him, something that would give her that son they had spoken of.
Her warm, gentle hands timidly grasped his manhood and Gage nearly spilled himself right there.
“Does it hurt if I hold you like this?” she asked.
“Are you mad?” he mumbled.
“What did you say?”
He lifted his head weakly and looked at her.
That gorgeous, dark red hair was splayed out over her shoulders, tickling his thighs and, at that moment, he realized just how much he loved her and had never even known it.
Or perhaps he had all along and had simply put her out of his mind, as he’d said.
In any case, all he could feel as he looked at her was a love so powerful that it threatened to burst from his chest.
She was his.