Epilogue
Chalford Hill, South of Gloucester
“Touch me,” she whispered. “Touch me, you brute. Let me feel you.”
Maxton didn’t need to be told twice. Mostly because this moment was a race against time.
With a growl, he picked up his wife and carried her to their bed, a very big bed that usually had three little girls in it at night, three little girls that refused to sleep in their own beds and a father who was too soft to make them do it.
So, moments in the bed with only the parents were far and few between.
He wasn’t going to keep his lusty wife waiting.
Once on the mattress, he loosened the fastens on her surcoat, pulling at them as she feigned a struggle.
She liked that sometimes, for him to dominate her, and he loved it as well.
Whenever she called him a brute, he knew what was expected of him.
He roughed her up a little bit, but it was all in good fun.
Easing the shift and dress off her shoulders, her breasts popped free and he could get his mouth onto a warm and tender nipple.
As he suckled her furiously, Andressa cried out softly, holding his head to her breast as if he were a starving child nursing against her.
Given that they’d had three children in five years, suckling breasts that weren’t full of milk was rare these days.
Not that he cared; he’d suckle her any way he could, but he didn’t like leaving his children hungry.
At the moment, their youngest child was almost three years of age, and Andressa’s breasts weren’t full of milk.
It was a thrilling moment.
Pushing her back on the bed, Maxton continued to nurse hungrily at her breasts as his hands caressed her buttocks and stroked her thighs.
He loved her thighs, long and silky things, and when he gently stroked the dark fluff of curls between her legs, she thrust her pelvis forward, trying to lure his fingers into her body.
Maxton knew that and responded by slipping a finger into her tight, wet sheath, feeling her gasp with pleasure.
She was very moist and he refused to wait any longer.
They had a very active and healthy sex life, even with the little girls who knew no boundaries, so they had to take their opportunities when they could.
Unfastening his breeches, he let them fall to his ankles and put the tip of his hard, throbbing phallus against her warm and wet folds.
“Tell me you love me, Andressa of Loxbeare,” he murmured, gently kissing her chin, her mouth. “Tell me that I am your everything.”
Andressa was bucking against him, trying to force him into her body. “You are my everything and more,” she whispered. “Give me your son, Max. Let me bear your son this time.”
Those words drove Maxton wild. He thrust into her, listening to her gasp with the sheer pleasure of it.
She cried out softly as he thrust again and again, seating himself to the hilt, feeling her tight wetness around him.
It was sheer bliss. Once fully seated, he held her buttocks, pulling her against his pelvis and began to thrust into her.
Andressa clung to him, wishing he could bury himself deeper.
He was well-endowed and satisfied her every time, but she was so desperate for the man that she always wanted more.
As he thrust into her, she had to put her hands up so he wouldn’t push her right off of the bed with his sheer power.
With every thrust, he ground his pelvis against hers and she could feel sparks when their bodies met.
His lips were against her forehead, kissing her softly as he made love to her.
It was heaven.
“Mama!”
Maxton froze, looking at Andressa with an expression between disappointment and surprise.
“Damnation,” he hissed. “Not now. Please, not now.”
Andressa grasped his buttocks, forcing him to continue. “Keep going,” she breathed. “The door is locked. They cannot get in.”
Maxton tried; with God as his witness, he tried. His wife’s beautiful body had him trapped, and all he wanted to do was release himself into her and feel her tight body as she released around him, too. That heavenly throbbing was something he lived for, every day of his life.
“Mama!” Now, they were banging on the door. “Dada, open!”
Maxton tried to resume his thrusts, ignoring the sounds of three little girls demanding their attention, but his concentration fractured when the banging grew worse and someone started crying.
He couldn’t stand it when his babies cried.
It was Ceri, the littlest; he recognized her voice. In his arms, Andressa started to laugh.
“My God, Max,” she declared, grabbing her husband by the hair and pulling his head from the crook of her neck. When their eyes met, her laughter only grew. “There is no use in continuing this. With Ceri weeping, the entire world stops and we both know it.”
He sighed heavily, a look of utter apology on his face. “I am sorry, love,” he said. “But… she is so young. She does not understand why I have locked the door on her.”
“She should be taking her nap, with her nurse present. Where in the world is that woman?”
“Probably sleeping, too. You know how she falls asleep when the girls do.”
Andressa rolled her eyes and, giving the man a loud kiss, pushed him away from her and tossed her skirts down.
“Go, Dada,” she said as she climbed off the bed. “Go to your baby girl. Make sure she understands that she is more important than her mother.”
Maxton sheepishly pulled up his breeches, tying them off. “That is not true.”
“It is.”
“That is not fair. I had very high hopes for this interlude, as you know.”
“We will never have a son this way.”
“Is that all you want? My son?”
Andressa laughed as she brushed at her skirts, smoothing them.
“Of course not,” she said. “You are all I dream of, my love. But next time, we shall have to wait until the children are most definitely asleep and escape to some chamber where they cannot find us. Mayhap, we shall go to the next city simply to be sure.”
Maxton laughed softly as he watched her cross the floor.
From the woman he met those years ago, that terribly starved pledge, to the woman she was today was like looking at two different people.
She had filled out over the years, with beautiful, full breasts, a long torso, and a womanly shape that every man she came across noticed.
Maxton had been forced to threaten and scowl at more men than he could count once they caught sight of his elegant wife with her beautiful face and delicious figure.
He considered himself a lucky man, indeed.
“We shall revisit this later tonight,” he assured her, turning away from the door in the hope that his full erection would quickly die down. “I promise you, later tonight when they are all asleep.”
Andressa cast him a very dubious expression before unbolting the door and opening it.
Instantly, three little girls bum-rushed in, as they’d been leaning against the panel.
While the eldest one, Danae, stopped at her mother, the other two ran straight to Maxton.
He bent over, scooping four-year-old Melisandra and almost three-year-old Ceri into his arms. Ceri was, indeed, weeping and Maxton kissed her wet face.
“Now, now,” he said. “Why the tears, sweetheart? There is no need to cry.”
Melisandra, her arms wrapped around her father’s neck, looked at her sister seriously. “She slapped me,” she said flatly. “I slapped her back.”
Maxton’s eyebrows lifted as he realized the situation. “I see,” he said. “Ceri, you must be kind to your sister. No slapping. We have discussed that.”
True to form, Ceri ignored him. She was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed cherub who was extremely smart.
She knew how to get around her father. Rubbing her eyes, she lay her head on his shoulder, weeping softly, and Maxton knew that was the end of his scolding.
That was all he could manage. As he looked at his wife, who simply shook her head in resignation, another figure appeared in the doorway.
It was Cullen, clad in mail and weapons. He looked at the little girls in the room with surprise.
“I thought they were sleeping,” he said.
Andressa sighed heavily. “You know better than that,” she said even as she cradled her eldest against her. “No one sleeps when they are supposed to around here.”
Cullen grinned; he’d been serving Maxton since the man had taken possession of his new property of Chalford Hill and was essentially one of the family now.
He, too, knew that the Loxbeare brood never slept when they were supposed to.
Even so, Chalford Hill was a remarkable place to raise a family, and Maxton and Andressa had the start of a big one.
The fortress was also a very rich property with a large castle, something that Maxton had turned into a military outpost for William Marshal.
But there was a history to that.
After the events at St. Blitha those years ago, it had been Maxton, Cullen, Kress, Achilles, Alexander, and Christopher de Lohr who had gathered the army to oust Andressa’s aunt from the property.
But before Maxton unleashed all of that military might and risked damaging the place, he’d had a meeting with the old woman and offered her a good deal of money to vacate the place as well as the promise he would not arrest her for stealing her niece’s inheritance.
As it turned out, Hildeth du Bose was very greedy, and knowing she could not fight off such an army, she readily agreed to the proposal and vacated the castle without incident.
Now, she lived somewhere in the south of France, or did the last they’d heard.
In truth, Maxton didn’t care what happened to the old woman and Andressa surely didn’t care, so she was forgotten nearly the moment she’d left Chalford Hill.