Chapter 17 #3
Understanding, pure and true, all but shimmered and glimmered between them, a clarity in their gazes, a seeing with no screen, no veil to dim the reality.
Locked in the other’s eyes, each saw and knew the possibilities, each recognized the potential.
The moment tugged. Montague bent his head, and Violet stretched up. Hands found hands and locked, holding them together, steady and anchored as their lips touched, brushed, then met.
Held.
The kiss was simple, unadorned, bare of anything save their feelings—and what they each intended the contact to convey. A pledge, a promise.
His lips moved on hers, seeking, yearning. Slipping her fingers from his, she reached up, wound her arms about his strong neck, pressed closer and kissed him back.
Gently, his hands rose to grip her sides, then he spread palms and fingers over her supple back, supporting and holding, keeping, but not seizing.
Glorying in her giving.
And his.
Eventually, he lifted his head. And felt faintly giddy in a dizzyingly pleasant way.
With a warmth that bloomed in his chest and spread as he saw the delight in her eyes, saw his own satisfaction mirrored there.
“Soon,” he said.
She nodded. “Soon.” With that, she drew back and, reluctantly, he let her go.
Drawing her shawl more tightly around her shoulders, Violet turned to the gate.
Heathcote walked with her the few steps further, waited while she slid the bolt back and swung the solid panel open.
She looked up at him—her man, the one man she’d been waiting all of her life to find—and smiled softly. “Good night, Heathcote.”
His answering smile held a touch of possessiveness. “Good night, my Violet.” With a dip of his head, he stepped through the gate. “Good night.”
On a sigh, she shut the gate, listened—and realized he was waiting for her to lock it. She did. A few seconds after the bolt slid home, she heard his footsteps slowly walk away.
Smiling, her expression incapable of adequately reflecting the joy buoying her heart, she turned and walked back to the terrace.
Walking up the shallow steps, she murmured to herself, “And how I’m going to manage to fall asleep I truly do not know.”
Smiling even more widely, she went indoors.
How absolutely lovely!” On a happy, satisfied sigh, Penelope turned from their bedroom window that overlooked the side garden.
Into Barnaby’s arms. He had come to look over her shoulder to see what she was so avidly watching below.
He’d taken one brief glance, then had transferred his gaze, and his attention, to his wife.
Meeting her dark eyes, he smiled. “You’re rather lovely, too.
” He hesitated, then, more soberly, said, “Have I told you that recently?”
She tilted her head the better to search his face, his eyes, then the subtle curve of her full lips deepened.
“Not recently enough. Perhaps you should remind me?” Her hands had come to rest on his chest; sliding them slowly up and over his shoulders, she moved nearer, pressed artfully closer.
“Of that, and all associated sentiments.”
He felt his lips curve with sexual intent, then he bent his head and set them to hers. Matched them to hers.
For a heartbeat they held still, then she parted her lips, and he angled his head. And took advantage of her flagrant invitation and filled her mouth, took, possessed, and savored.
And she savored him with an open, undisguised appreciation he’d come to treasure. One of the many joys of marriage, of a connection that had grown, one that had deepened and broadened, and, to his secret relief, had, if anything, returned stronger than ever after Oliver’s birth.
There was a confidence there, between them now, that spoke of mutual experience, of a degree of intimate knowledge of the other that could never be achieved with anyone else. For him there was her, and for her there was him, and both of them lived with that mutual certainty anchoring their hearts.
Their foundation.
Rock-solid and sure, unwavering and immutable, it promised them all the strength they would ever need.
In the here and now it gave them the understanding and ability, and even more the reason, to go slow.
To take each moment and stretch it, expand it to the fullest, and squeeze from every heartbeat of the interlude every last drop of pleasure.
From the first brush of his hands over her silk-clad curves, to the pressure of her hands easing his coat off his shoulders, through each choreographed beat of a dance they knew by heart, they immersed themselves in each instant.
Each tick of their sensual clock brought delight.
Fed desire.
Invoked, provoked, and stoked their passions.
Divesting her of her gown became a tempting, alluring, irresistible prelude. Ultimately revealing her breasts was a special delight; now their son was weaned, her breasts had softened into lusher, utterly sumptuous mounds, ones he could now reclaim, could once again feast upon.
She gasped, and clung, and held him to her, urging him on not with words but with deeds, fluent in the unspoken language of loving as they both now were, but, as ever, she refused to cede her share of the reins.
She demanded, and took her turn at stripping him, revealing, rejoicing in, and then feasting.
With her small hands, with her lips, her hot mouth, and her teasing tongue.
With every last one of her senses.
As he had with her, she explored, claimed, and possessed, and set fires beneath his skin.
Then she slid to her knees and took him into her mouth, and razed his senses utterly.
Devoted herself wholeheartedly to the task.
When he could withstand her sensual torture no longer, not for another heartbeat, he broke, and drew her up, drew her fully into his arms—and they both froze, and together seized the moment to absorb, to appreciate to the fullest that excruciatingly evocative instant of naked bodies meeting, of bare skin sliding, gliding, her silken sleekness stroking against his harder and rougher, hair-dusted limbs as their bodies instinctively adjusted and accommodated each other’s in their intimate embrace.
Instinctively, together, they drank in the free, unfettered giving—and the consequent eruption of mutual delight.
Mutual pleasure.
That was their goal as he bent his head, as she stretched up and their lips sealed in a kiss of blazing, aching, unforgiving need.
They let the flames rage; they held to the kiss and let passion’s flames lick, spread, then coalesce and roar.
Breaking from the conflagration, he raised his head and lifted her.
On a desperate gasp, she wound her arms about his shoulders, clasped her hands at his nape, shook back her tumbling curls and, raising her legs, wrapped them about his hips.
And sank down as, gripping her hips, he drew her down.
They came together on a sensual sigh.
In a moment of aching togetherness. Of acute, unfettered, unrestrained intimacy.
Lids falling, they savored the inexpressible delight.
Absorbed the welling pleasure.
Then they let the surging, driving need take them. Have them, capture them, whip them on.
And from somewhere amid all the passion and the fire and the heat and the urgency, from beneath their sensual desperation, joy, effervescent and unstoppable, unquenchable, bubbled up.
And filled them.
Merging with the sweeping tide of their sensual pleasure, with their driving need for completion, that joy, brilliant and acute, wound and twined and added another dimension to their experienced joining.
And opened their senses to another dimension of delight.
Penelope felt like she was close to bursting with the welling, surging, geysering emotions; never had they been this strong, this powerful, this glittering and engaging.
Dragging her lips from Barnaby’s, she tipped her head back, then, all but bubbling with that swirling delight, she framed his face between her hands, found his heavy-lidded eyes with her gaze, and gasped, “The bed.”
She didn’t have to ask twice. In three swift strides, he was by the bed’s side, then he tipped them both down.
They bounced once, then sank into the billows of their featherbed, and she reached for him as he drew her fully beneath him; she wriggled and then arched, and on a glorious gasp took him in, took him deep as, on a guttural groan, he thrust powerfully into her.
Then they rode the racing tide of their uninhibited, unfettered passions.
When the peak appeared before them, they raced on without check, in concert, together, in unshakeable accord.
Up and over the sensual cliff, and into the void they flew.
Striving to reach their sensual sun.
Hands gripping, fingers twined, bodies cleaving, hearts beating as one they stretched, touched, and let the implosion take them. Let ecstasy break them, fragment, and remake them.
As it had so many times before, but this time, in that infinite instant of searing togetherness, of emotional as well as physical melding, from under heavy lids their eyes met, held, and they both saw, both knew, both sensed the subtle addition that extra joy had brought to them—to their union.
Another strand woven into the emotional rope that linked them.
Another element of their love.
An additional strength that would hold them together over the years to come.
Heavy-lidded, passion-spent, their gazes held for an instant longer, then she let her lids fall, felt a smile—full and open—curve her lips.
Felt its mate curving his lips as he touched them to hers.
And they let go and sank into the glory, into the bliss that was theirs to claim.
Later, they shifted and settled amid the rumpled sheets, wrapped in each other’s arms. His head on the pillows, Penelope slumped against him, her head resting in the hollow beneath his shoulder, Barnaby stared up at the shadowed ceiling and, without conscious intention, found his mind sorting through all he’d felt. All he’d sensed.
All that had come to be, settling like an additional layer of experience between them.
Raising one hand, he stroked the rumpled silk of her dark hair. He knew she wasn’t yet asleep. “You’re happy, aren’t you?” She’d grown more settled, more assured and content, over the last weeks. “Happy with the way things are working out.”
It was that happiness he’d sensed running through their loving.
Without raising her head, she nodded. “We might not have caught our murderer yet, but in a personal sense, we’ve already succeeded—or so I believe.
” A second ticked past, then she lifted her head; looking into his face, she met his eyes.
“I’ve found the balance I was searching for—I don’t just think that, I know that.
It feels right. My studies, my lectures, my helping others with translations—that’s all still important, still speaks to a certain part of me, of my mind—and you, Oliver, and this household, and to a lesser extent our wider families, will always come first, have first claim on my time and my energies, yet still I truly need that extra element that comes through investigations. ”
She paused, eyes on his; after several seconds of considering, she stated, “It’s not just the intellectual challenge of solving a mystery, of ferreting out all the facts and putting them together in a jigsaw of events to clearly define what took place.
That’s a part of it, true, but, ultimately the highest calling, the strongest motivation, is to see justice done.
Through helping with investigations when the opportunity is there, contributing to the overall justice of our world is something I can do, and therefore should do. ”
Her lips curved lightly as she added, “The pursuit of, and support of, justice. That’s why you do what you do, and why I should, and need to, assist whenever I can. Whenever Fate lays the opportunity before me, I should, and need to, respond.”
He paused, studying all he could see—all she let him see—in her eyes, all that he could feel through her gaze, read in her expression, then he murmured, “I see it, too—that you have found your balance. And it’s one I understand, a stance I can—and will happily—accommodate and support.”
Her smile was the definition of radiant.
“Excellent!” Snuggling back into his arms, settling her head as she liked, in the hollow beneath his shoulder, closing her hands over his as he settled his arms about her, she sighed deeply and relaxed.
“Now we just need Corby to confirm that Maurice Halstead is our murderer, and all will be completely well.”