Ten
Brenna’s breasts had been her salvation: her breasts and her height. Women had breasts; girls did not. Girls were small, flat-chested, and invisible. A tall, shapely woman was noticed, and in that notice lay measures of freedom and safety.
These realizations had come upon Brenna slowly, dimly, as she’d seen that for one man, her developing breasts had not been objects of curiosity or desire, but rather, disappointment—disgust, even. She’d loved her breasts ever since.
“Brenna Maureen.” Just that, her name, but uttered like a prayer, while Michael treated her breasts to a slow, warm caress that could only be called reverent. “Kiss me, please.”
She loved her breasts, and loved Michael too. Loved that for all he’d gone for a soldier, he would never force her, never tell her to hush and be still while he stole from her what should only be freely given.
He levered up to nuzzle her jaw, asking for kisses when he might have demanded them.
“I won’t break,” Brenna whispered, brushing her mouth over his. “I’m not that fragile.”
She wasn’t that fragile any longer. As Michael’s tongue delicately traced her lower lip, Brenna realized that all his years away had served a purpose. Ten years ago, even five years ago, she could not have been a true wife to her husband.
But she could be now.
“Tell me,” Michael said, closing a thumb and forefinger over her nipple. “Is that what you want? More? Less?”
“Both,” she said, bracing herself on her elbows. “Both breasts at the same time. And your kisses.”
For a man who’d been years without female company, Michael was good at making love. He could fondle her breasts with both hands, kiss her, and shift about beneath her in such a fashion that Brenna lost track of the specifics and surrendered to a general pleasuring.
For long minutes, she kissed him while he stroked her breasts, teased her nipples, and undulated that male part of him against Brenna’s increasingly damp sex. Brenna sat up, the better to grab a much-needed deep breath. “Perhaps we should close the window, and some of these covers are—”
Michael drew a finger down the midline of her brow. “Stop weighing and measuring. Every knife, fork, and spoon will still be in its appointed drawer come morning.”
Brenna’s wits had abandoned their assigned drawer, and for once, this made her happy. “I want to make love with my husband, and he has yet to explain to me—”
Michael’s thumb glided up the crease of her sex. “When I make love with you for the first time, it won’t be with the candles out, under the covers, not even moonshine to illuminate your passions.”
“Our passions,” Brenna managed, but he’d touched her again with his thumb, a slick, sweet pressure and retreat that flung her entire mental store of silver high into sparkling beams of sunshine. “I want to see you too.”
She would need to see him. Need to see that it was her Michael and no other with her in the bed.
“I’m right here, Brenna.” He caressed her breast with just the right balance between assurance and entreaty. “Close your eyes.”
“No.”
By the light of the dying fire, Michael’s smile bloomed, naughty, approving, and tender. “You disobey the husband you vowed obedience to?”
“In this bed, I obey no one but myself.”
And his thumb, oh, his thumb. She obeyed that single part of him, moved into his touch in a rhythm that came from him like a gift, not a command at all.
She accepted that rhythm and made it her own.
“Brenna Maureen, dearest wife, I could not love ye more.”
She wanted to hold the sight of Michael’s fierce, tender smile close, wanted to cling to it, a final reassurance of the rightness of what she felt, but the pleasure was too much.
She went soaring, into a brilliant, magical darkness of bodily joy, into a marital benediction for the trust she’d placed in her spouse and in herself.
Brenna did not recall closing her eyes, did not make a decision to moan softly as the pleasure took her, did not intend to collapse on her husband’s chest as the bright, trailing streams of ecstasy faded like so many stars falling through her body.
And she most assuredly did not give herself permission to cry.
“Hush, now,” Michael whispered, his hand drifting over her hair. “Settle yourself, and we’ll talk.”
Few men would have made that offer—few would have known it was needed.
Brenna used a corner of the sheet to swipe at her tears. “No words, Husband. Hold me.”
Fundamental fairness suggested she ought not to be issuing orders if she wouldn’t take any. She batted that sensible thought away and touched her tongue to the pulse in Michael’s throat. This made him smile. She could feel that it made him smile, so she did it again.
Her husband held her; he kissed her temple; he stroked her hair. Never did a man put right so many wrongs without needing a hint how to go about it.
Brenna sorted through words and gestures that might communicate her vast appreciation for his consideration and generosity, but none accommodated both her full heart and her flagging courage.
With her last waking shred of awareness, Brenna hoped falling asleep in Michael’s arms would convey the many tender sentiments her silence did not.
Never had torment and bliss so neatly intertwined to choke a man’s selfish impulses and leave him aching in body and pleased with himself in spirit as he lay beneath his sleeping, sated wife.
Brenna had gone off like the fireworks displayed in such abundance in the victory celebrations, and yet, Michael wasn’t entirely sure what foe had been vanquished in their bed.
Time and distance had gone down to defeat, surely, for nine years of separation might easily leave husband and wife with unbridgeable differences.
Fear had suffered a loss as well, fear that their marriage would limp along, a convenience and a convention rather than a covenant.
Brenna had also surrendered something to him, and he something to her—his heart, at least—and yet, Michael drifted off with a sense of having come upon a greater wilderness than he’d anticipated.
One he would explore, hand in hand with his lady wife.
They awoke to a brilliant sunny morning, some little brown bird singing its fool feathers off at the windowsill. Michael slid a hand over the warm female flank snuggled up to him. “Good morning, Lady Strathdee.”
Her ladyship mumbled something, suggesting she didn’t share the bird’s, or her baron’s, charity with the day.
Michael brushed Brenna’s hair aside and spoke right against her ear. “Brenna Maureen, it’s a beautiful day. Wake up and kiss the husband who loves you.”
He nudged her with his half-erect cock, a reminder of what he had planned for her in the broad and beautiful light of day, and a distraction from the words she’d likely find a bit awkward the first thousand times he spoke them to her.
“Go away.”
“I’ve married a shy woman.” Though, bless her, not at all shy about giving orders in bed. “Perhaps a cup of tea will restore your courage.”
A tousled head emerged from the pillows. “Tea won’t help with that.”
Trust would help; tea wouldn’t hurt.
“Keep the bed warm for me, Wife.” Michael tossed the covers aside and paraded to the door, returning with the breakfast tray and more than the beginnings of a morning salute.
Brenna’s expression, however, was less than tantalized, and she was a lady who did enjoy her tea. Michael set the tray across her lap and sneaked a kiss to her cheek.
“Brenna, are you yet a maiden?”
The question needed to be asked. The way she stared at the teapot, at a loss for words, at a loss even for an expression, assured Michael it did.
“Why do you ask?”
Rather than climb in beside her, Michael perched at her hip and brushed her hair back from her cheek.
“A woman can be faithful and loyal to her husband, and yet, there are those who would trespass against her chastity. I went to war, Brenna. I saw what men will do when their morals have died on the battlefield. I wasn’t here to protect you. If you came to any harm, the fault lies with me.”
Those words needed to be said too.
She unwrapped the teapot and lifted it, as if to pour, though her hand shook. Rather than risk a scalding, Michael didn’t interfere.
“I am yet a maid, as much as you left me a maid when you went to war,” she said, setting the pot down and wrapping it back up in its white toweling. “Your absence did not put me at risk of harm.”
She stirred cream and honey into the mug of tea, while Michael weighed her words. His wife was being kind, sparing him an accurate accounting. Perhaps she hadn’t suffered the loss of her maidenhead, but somebody had trespassed nonetheless.
She offered him the tea. He wrapped his hands around hers and held the cup to her lips instead.
“Will you tell me, someday, Brenna, what burdens I left you with? I know it wasn’t easy, and the telling won’t be easy either, but a husband and wife should be able to talk about anything.”
She held the cup to his mouth. “Will you tell me about France?”
Michael took a swallow of hot, sweet fortification. The covers had dipped, exposing the curve of a lovely, pale breast. He twitched them back up as Brenna returned their tea to the tray.
“Why would you want to know about privation, misery, cold, bad rations, and a lot of stinking, drunken—”
Her smile was slight, the first pale glimmer on the eastern horizon of humor. “It’s the same thing. I want to know about you, and if that means accursed Frenchmen and sore, stinking feet, then that’s what it means.”
She had him, because he’d reveal every dingy, craven, weak corner of his soul to gain his wife’s trust. Almost.