45. CHAPTER 45 #2
He applied salve and bandaged her wrists with new linen — clean, thin, just enough to cover the scrapes. He worked slowly. He was not as fast as Paul. But his hands did not falter, and when he was done, the bandages were neat and the linen was not too tight .
He refashioned the medical sling last. From memory.
When her arm was bound back into its proper support, he sat back on his heels and looked at her.
"Better?"
"Better." She meant it. The pain had not gone, but the rest of her felt clean and warm and whole in a way she had not felt since before the kidnapping. Maybe even longer than that. "Thank you."
"You don't have to thank me. Looking after you is a pleasure and a privilege."
"I'm thanking you anyway."
He smiled. She loved that he was full of smiles this morning — or afternoon. He stood, lifted her, and carried her back to the bed.
After setting her down against the pillows, he pulled the coverlet up over her legs, then bent and pressed his lips to her forehead and stayed there a long moment, his breath warm against her hairline.
When he straightened, she opened her eyes and looked at him.
He looked back.
"Will you be all right for a moment?" he asked.
"Yes, but I would rather you stayed by my side."
His hand cradled her cheek, and he gave her a soft kiss.
"I shall not be long. Just long enough to wash myself and order us some food."
He walked back to the dressing room, and she heard the splashing of water as he washed. When he came back a few minutes later, his hair was wet, he was wearing a burgundy velvet robe, and he had a tray with tea and sandwiches in his hands.
The food was tempting, but not nearly as tempting as her husband.
"I thought you would want something to eat. You must be hungry."
"Ravenous," she said, and he must have read something in her tone, for he gave her a quick look before depositing the tray on the bed.
He prepared her tea exactly the way she liked it and arranged a few finger sandwiches on a plate for her, placing everything within her reach. Once the smell of the food reached her, her stomach made a very impolite sound, and she put her hand to her belly, her eyes wide.
Valentine didn't miss the sound or the gesture. "Did you eat at all yesterday?"
"Not after breakfast."
"Bastard."
He meant Alfred, and he said it with such ferocity that she was sure if his cousin were not already dead, Dalton would have killed him. She placed her hand over his.
"It does not really matter. A few missed meals. What Alfred did to you was so much worse. He shot at you. The betrayal of your own family…"
"It is worse than that. He didn't just shoot at me.
He conspired against his own country. Everything — the shipwreck, my not being able to find you afterward — it was all engineered by him.
I will tell you the full story later, but for now, I just want you to know that you are safe.
That nobody, either from my family or from my work, will ever harm you again. I won't allow it."
She smiled at him because she thought he needed the reassurance much more than she did.
"I know. I have always felt safe with you."
The room fell silent. Only the sounds of clinking china as they ate and the crackling of the fire. Even the rain had eased to a soft patter.
When they had finished their sandwiches and washed them down with several cups of tea, and he had removed the tray from the bed, she reached out with her good arm and grabbed the lapels of his robe.
"I want to try again, Valentine."
He froze. The words filled the room. Yes, it was a bold demand, but she knew what she wanted, had always known what she wanted, and refused to wait for it any longer.
To his credit, he did not flinch or argue. He did not reach for the old deflections. He looked at her, and she watched the resistance leave him.
"Yes," he said.
One word. No qualification .
She kissed him.
The kiss was different from any they had shared.
Every other time — at the folly, in the dungeons, in the candlelit world they had built together beneath the castle — there had been a layer between them.
His control. Her uncertainty. The structure he imposed on their desire, the boundaries he drew, the roles he assigned.
She had not minded. She had found pleasure in them, and trust, and the thrill of surrendering to a man whose restraint was its own kind of devotion.
She was not asking for restraint today.
She pulled back and looked at him. His pupils wide, his breath unsteady, one hand at her waist, the other bracing him on the bed.
"Take me," she said, kissing him again, sucking his lower lip into her mouth. "Give me a baby."
"Your shoulder — "
"Is in a sling and will be fine if you are careful. And you are always careful." She held his gaze. "But I'm not asking for careful today. I'm asking for everything."
He hovered over her, and she felt the tightening of his hand on her waist.
"No withdrawal," she clarified.
His breath caught. She could see it in the muscle jumping at his jaw. He stood still and let her name the terms.
"No withdrawal," he repeated. And the word sounded different in his mouth. Not a concession. A vow.
She patted the bed next to her. "Lie down," she said. "Let me see you."
He obeyed. The man who gave commands, who set the terms, who ran every encounter they had ever had, discarded his robe and lay down on his back, arms crossed behind his head, completely naked, and let his wife look at him.
She looked. The lean, hard body she had come to know in fragments — by touch in the dark, by stolen glances, by the feel of him against her.
Now she saw it in the gray afternoon light: the flat planes of his stomach, the dark hair on his chest that narrowed to a thin line over his stomach that arrowed down to join with the nest of curls at the apex of his thighs.
His member, thick and hard, jutting out to lie against his stomach.
She took it in her hand, felt the full, hot weight of him against her palm, and heard the sound he made — a low, bitten off groan, almost pained.
She bent and kissed his stomach. The tip of his member. Licked her way up to his flat nipple and flicked it with her tongue.
"Vivienne." Her name in his mouth, and nothing else.
"Come here."
He did. Placing a hand behind her back to support her, he rolled them over so that he was on top. Face to face. The weight of his lower body on hers, his torso braced on his arms, careful of her shoulder.
Her good arm wound around his neck, bringing his head down for a kiss. He gave her his mouth, possessing hers with tongue and teeth and lips. Until she was gasping and arching toward him.
"Shhh. Careful. Don’t be impatient, my little spitfire. I will give you everything you want. I am yours."
His mouth slid from her lips, only to paint a trail of kisses down her neck, lower still, opening the buttons of her nightgown to expose her breasts. One was covered by the bandages, but the other one was free, and it received his full attention.
He licked and sucked and lapped at her nipple until she was screaming, her hand pulling at his hair, unable to withstand a moment more of pleasure so acute it bordered on pain.
"Val, I can't…"
"You can. And you will."
Another swirl of his tongue, and his finger entered her, his thumb playing with her clitoris until she was tightening around him, winding higher and higher and then unraveling in a climax that went on and on, in seemingly infinite waves.
When she opened her eyes, his forehead was against hers. So close she could count the flecks of darker gray in his eyes.
She reached down and guided him with her hand to her entrance. He paused there and shuddered. The old reflex, the instinct to calculate, to plan the exit before the first stroke. She felt it rise in him and fall away .
"Stay," she said, running her hand down his flank to press down on his rock-hard bottom.
He entered her. Slow. So slow she felt every inch of him, the stretch and the fullness, and his eyes on hers while he moved inside her. Not performing. Not commanding.
Just a man inside the woman he loved. Terrified. Doing it anyway.
She wrapped her legs around his hips. Held him there. Felt the muscles of his back tremble under her calf.
He moved slow at first. She watched his face. The concentration. His arms braced on either side of her head. His breath coming in uneven bursts against her mouth.
"Val." She ran her fingers through his hair. Drew his mouth to hers. Kissing him, matching the rhythm of his body with her own. He groaned into her mouth. A sound from somewhere deeper than thought.
The pace changed. She felt the moment his body stopped obeying his mind and obeyed something older. His hips found their own rhythm. Deeper. Harder. His hand slid beneath the small of her back and tilted her hips, and the new angle sent a shock through her that made her gasp against his throat.
"Yes," she breathed. "Like that. Don't stop. Don't — "
He buried his face against her neck. His skin damp against hers. His breath hot. He was shaking all over with the effort of not retreating.
Her own pleasure was building again. Tangled up in the feeling beneath it so that she could not separate one from the other.
When it came, her climax was not as sharp, as blinding as before.
This was messier. Slower. It started in her center and moved outward through her limbs, tightening around him.
She pressed her mouth to his shoulder and held on, pulling him closer.
His whole body answered with a shudder, his hips stuttering, his arms locking around her. And then, the gathering. The preparation to leave her body the way he had every time before.
She tightened her legs around him.
"Stay. "
A sound tore from his throat. Not a word.
She locked her ankles behind his back. "Stay."
He stayed.
The resistance left him all at once, like something snapping.
His hips drove forward and his body went rigid, and the sound he made was nothing she had heard from him before.
Not the bitten-off groan of the dungeons.
Not the silence of their other encounters.
A cry, a roar, from somewhere that had been closed off and abandoned for years.
From the boy who had buried both parents before he was eighteen, from the man who had pulled away from her every time because staying was the thing that could destroy him.
She felt him come inside her. The heat. The pulse. His face pressed into the curve of her neck. His breath wrecked. His body shaking with something that went beyond the physical. She held him. Her good arm around his shoulders. Her legs locked. Her mouth against his hair, whispering his name.
He lifted his head. Looked at her. His eyes were wrecked — red-rimmed, wet, nothing left guarding them. He looked as though he had been taken apart and was not certain the pieces went back together.
"Hello," she said.
The sound he made was almost a laugh. Broken. Amazed. He rested his forehead against hers and held her. Still inside. Still together.
She reached up and wiped the tears from his face. Traced the crease between his brows with her thumb. Kissed his mouth.
"I love you," he said, when his breathing had almost returned to normal.
"I love you, too."
And she knew this time it was without barriers. Without conditions.
They had conquered fear.