Twelve #4
“You’re beautiful,” Michael said. “Your breasts are so… I must—” He touched his tongue to her nipple, the way he might have lapped dew from ripe, low-hanging fruit on a bright fall morning. “I love—”
Brenna cradled the back of his head against her palm and offered herself to his mouth. He obliged; he obliged willingly and joyously. Kissing, nuzzling, lapping, and when Brenna’s damp sex brushed over his hard cock, suckling.
“We’ve kissed,” Brenna said. “We’ve touched. We’ve pleasured each other.”
Michael nuzzled the underside of her breast, where the scent of lavender blended with desire. “And?”
“And please join your body to mine.”
Her coronet had come loose, her thick red braid teasing at Michael’s belly. He took up the end and brushed it over her nipples.
“You do it. I’m otherwise occupied.”
For this was important, that Brenna put her hands on her husband and take him into her body of her own volition.
“You like my breasts.”
Michael left off toying with those treasures to study his wife’s face.
“I adore them, but more, I adore that you’ll share them with me. To touch you thus is a precious privilege.” He kissed each breast, hoping Brenna would exercise a few privileges of her own.
She remained still, poised above him, naked and rosy, her hair tousled and the afternoon light slanting across her face. Some sentiment quivered through her, some difficult, passionate declaration.
“What, Brenna Maureen? You can tell me anything.”
She brushed a thumb over his mouth. “I cannot tell you.”
Though clearly, she wanted to. For nine years, Michael could not come home. “Then keep your words, and give me your loving.”
To emphasize his suggestion, Michael let his hands fall away from Brenna’s breasts, so the moment was entirely in her keeping, the decision hers, just as the decision to remain at war had been unilaterally his.
Brenna did not disappoint. She took his shaft in her hand, seated him at the opening to her body, and settled over him enough to start their joining.
“Is that how it goes?” she asked, bracing herself on her hands.
“Exactly like that, and even more, if you’d like. All of me, if it would please you.” He could barely form words, so desperately was he fighting the urge to thrust. “You might move a bit, get comfortable.”
Her experiments nearly cost him his back teeth, so hard did he clench his jaw.
What she lacked in experience, Brenna made up for in courage and curiosity.
In no time, the infernal woman had a rhythm, gliding over him easily, with a sweet sort of eagerness which would soon part Michael from his reason.
“You said we’d pleasure each other more,” she reminded him. “Is this the more part?”
Lucifer’s bones. “Soon, love. Maybe this will move things in the proper direction.” He added an undulation of his own to her efforts, not half of what his body wanted to do, not a quarter. “Do you like that?”
Her expression acquired a degree of concentration she didn’t turn on her ledgers or her embroidery, and neither did she answer him.
Not in words. Her body replied in a resounding affirmative though. Her hips took on a focused, questing sense of purpose, her breathing became labored. Michael added a touch more power to his thrusting as Brenna rose over him on straight arms.
“Michael?”
“Here.”
“Look at—look at me.”
He looked at her, at her breasts gently heaving with her exertion, at the pale, smooth skin of her torso, at the way blond curls kissed damp auburn where their bodies joined.
“Look at—” She used her hand fisted in his hair to shift his focus to her eyes, and abruptly Michael understood.
He locked gazes with her, let her see all the desperation and homesickness and love in him, gave her irrefutable visual assurances—as pleasure came for them, overtook them, and swamped their every faculty—that she was with her husband, and he was with her.
And no other.
When the cataclysm ebbed, Brenna hung over him, heaving like a steeplechaser who’d won over a muddy course against a tough field.
“Let me hold you,” Michael said, but he made no move to drag her against his chest, because these moments were every bit as fraught as what had come before. “I’d like very much to hold you, I mean.”
He’d like very much to see her eyes, to know if the past few moments had been the true start to their marriage, or the end of all its hopes.
“Brenna? Love?”
Her breathing eased marginally, and she slowly, slowly raised her head.
To reveal a face transfigured with the sort of joy a man didn’t expect to behold in the mortal realm.
“What I wanted to say earlier?”
Michael couldn’t help but smooth her hair back. “My lady, you’ve said sonnets and ballads and volumes.” He did not need to hear her say she loved him, for her sentiments were beyond dispute.
She caught his hand, kissed his palm, and beamed down at him.
“What I wanted to say, Michael Brodie, was welcome home.”
His expression likely matched hers then, for joy, for fatuous pleasure in simply drawing breath, for she’d given him the words, which, especially from her, he had very much needed to hear.