Chapter 22 #2
“But you didn’t have to get me anything,” I tell him again with my heart in my throat and nerves dampening my palms. “I’m already happier than I ever dreamed I could be.” Still, I’m extremely curious as to what he thinks would be special to us both.
“I wanted to,” he answers huskily, staring down at me with love shining so deeply in his eyes that I can almost see his very soul. Ears turning red, he brings a burlap sack around and retrieves a small, rectangular something from it. “Here,” he says, extending it towards me. “Merry Christmas.”
“Why, it’s…” I trace the raised edges of all six spades spread over the wooden carving of a playing card. “The six of spades.”
“The card that started it all,” he says with a tender grin.
Indeed it did. The card that made us both win. This one’s about the same size but made with a wood so smooth that it almost feels polished. “You made this yourself?”
“Yep. It’s walnut. Same as I used for Emmaline’s cradle.”
My lips soften. “That makes it all the more special. I’ll treasure it always. Thank you, Warren.” And I love that no one but us will know the meaning the card holds.
“No thanks needed, wife.” He shifts on his feet before a bit of impishness peeks through his bashful smile.
It’s amazing how the man who so thoroughly claimed my body can be so endearing.
“Made you one more thing, too.” He reaches into the bag again and brings out a wooden picture frame.
“Don’t have anything to go in it yet, but I heard Hope’s Stand is getting a photographer soon.
Figured I’d take you and Emmaline come spring so we can get a family portrait done. ”
“Oh, Warren.” I throw my arms around him so tightly that the air is knocked from him, and even though the edge of the picture frame must be poking into his stomach as it is mine, he hugs me even tighter.
“I would so very much love to have a photograph of our family. Thank you so much, and Merry Christmas, husband. You couldn’t have chosen any more perfectly thoughtful gifts for me than these.
” He truly couldn’t have because these were crafted with his love.
Warren places both items on the sofa so he can hold me properly.
“Merry Christmas, wife.” His heartbeat thumps in my ear, a steady comfort that only elevates my happiness as his fingers lock together at the small of my back.
He feels so good and warm and strong. How on earth this man looked at me so ragged and dirty and with child and still wanted to marry me, I’ll never understand.
Not even if he explains it to me one thousand times over.
How I love him. I press a kiss over his kind heart through his shirt, and his quick inhale sounds just like the times I’ve heard it from him in bed.
When he was inside me, moving deep and making me his.
I cut my eyes upward and find the same stirring of awareness in the dark gaze staring back at me.
That look…it does something to me. Something that makes me want to be a wife to him.
“Thank you,” I tell him again as I rub small circles with the flat of my hand to his chest. “You’re so very good to me. ”
“Mara,” he says with a groan. “Don’t go thanking me for doing what any decent husband should do for his wife.”
My hand drops to the front of his trousers. “Hmm. I wonder if you’ll thank me when I do what a wife should do for her husband.”
“God Almighty,” he growls, grabbing my wrist before I can squeeze his thickness.
“I didn’t get them for you to make you feel like you had to thank me like this.
There aren’t any strings attached to those presents, Mara, and there won’t be any in the future.
I love you and wanted to see a smile on that pretty mouth of yours. ”
Warren.
My sweet husband.
It’s because of who he is that I barely think of my next words before they leave me. “And I love you and want you to see this pretty mouth of mine wrapped around your cock. Maybe partly to thank you, but mostly because I want to give you another part of me.”
He groans. “You can’t say stuff like that to me, wife. How am I supposed to be a gentleman when that’s all I can see in my head now?”
“Maybe I don’t want you to be a gentleman when I’m trying to do this for you.
” Fingers wiggling free from his slackened grip, I stroke him through the fabric, still wondering how on earth he walks around with something this huge in his trousers all the time without it getting in the way.
“It’s no secret that I was forced to do…
things of a certain nature that I wouldn’t have done if I’d had a choice. ”
I hurry before his eyes cloud over too much. “But I want all of this with you. I want to put my mouth on you because it’s my choice to please you. Let this be my gift to you as a wife who loves her husband.”
A rough palm cradles my cheek. “I don’t like you thinking you need to use your body as payment. Gifts don’t need to be repaid. Not with me.”
“But this isn’t a payment,” I cajole as I lean into his warmth. “It’s freely given. And to refuse a gift from your wife is the height of rudeness. Do you truly expect me to believe you wouldn’t want to see me on my knees before you, gazing up at you while you filled my mouth?”
“Fuck,” Warren growls as his hips buck up the slightest bit into my hold. As if he can’t help himself. “You win, wife. But I don’t think I can handle Patches watching us.”
“An unintended audience could make things uncomfortable,” I agree, pushing back thoughts of times past. A quick glance to the fireplace shows the pup resting his bald chin on front paws and in clear view of us.
Once Emmaline grows older, we’ll need a solution for her, too.
Maybe Warren will need to add another bedroom sooner than he thinks.
I drag him behind the sofa and away from curious amber eyes, and he ever so thoughtfully places a pillow on the floor for me.
And now, for the first time in months, I’m on my knees.
But unlike before, this is my choice. I’m not afraid or resentful because neither Neil nor any of the others are here.
There’s no Montgomery Blackwood circling me, ready to cane my back and hands for moving without permission.
There’s no Joe forcing himself down my throat while spewing false promises to keep me docile and obedient.
There’s only Warren, the man I love and choose to give this pleasure to.
He clamps his hands onto the back of the sofa as I unbutton his trousers and test the immensity of his girth with a slow squeeze. “Fuck, wife,” he hisses. “You got me so worked up that I may not even last long enough to even get in your mouth.”
I stroke his entire length, thick base to its blunt tip, before palming the plum head that already leaks a clear trail of need. He swears a blue streak as his hips jerk, and I smother a laugh. “You act like you’ve never been touched like this before.”
This close to him, I can see how his entire body stiffens. He exhales. “That’s because I haven’t.”
I look up at him in confusion, his cock still hard in my grasp. “You haven’t?”
“Not other than my own hand. Definitely never with a mouth.”
I’m taken aback by his husky confession, but his reactions are beginning to make a bit more sense, both now and in other encounters.
The way he was almost clumsy and unsure in the beginning…
the way his big, strong body shuddered and strained for control of itself when he slid into me.
When I’d needed him to move inside me and he thought I meant for him to leave…
But what he’d lacked in skill, he made up with confidence and passion as he swiftly mastered it. “Had you ever been with any woman before me?”
“None.” Doing his best to ignore the massive erection between us, he brushes a thumb over my bottom lip. “I told you the night you finally let me put my head between your thighs that it was my first time.”
I know it’s your first time. Mine, too. His words from then echo in my mind.
“I thought we were only pretending,” I say cautiously, suddenly feeling very unsure of myself. “That you were saying it to make me feel better.”
It had worked, maybe too well.
His hand drops to his thigh, fingers stretching as if they still yearn to touch me.
“I did want to make you feel better, but I was also telling the truth. Your past didn’t make you any less worthy of having the first time you deserved and the one I wanted to give you.
I may not have been with a woman before, but don’t you go getting it in your head that I was an innocent schoolboy.
If you knew how many damn nights in our bed that I had to fight to keep my thoughts respectable about you… ”
A muscle in his cheek pulses, telling me it must have been quite the number of occurrences.
“All that matters is you and I chose to have a first time together for us. I don’t know about you, but it was pretty damn memorable for me.
And I told you when we danced that I like doing first times with you. ”
Warren always knows just what to say to break down my barriers and rebuild my confidence.
My husband, sweet, kind man that he is, simply must be destined for sainthood in the next life.
If I dwell on his virtues for too much longer, I might cry and ruin the poignancy of the moment, so I lean into my love for him and slide my hand down his shaft.
“I like doing first times with you, too.”
A simple and honest answer.
Warren’s cock and balls twitch mightily, and there’s a strong possibility we may need a new sofa if his fingertips dig any harder and deeper into the fabric.
“Speaking of first times, please don’t get upset if I unexpectedly make a mess all over you,” he grits through clenched teeth.
“I can’t even think straight right now so I don’t know if I’ll be able to warn you. ”