Chapter 14 – Enduring Happiness #4
He could have listened to her soft, drowsy voice forever as she went on, telling her story.
It was odd to hear about the Remin Grimjaw she had heard about, a man that was nearly as strange to him as he was to her.
He hadn’t really known what was said about him, when he was growing up.
He had been too busy trying to live long enough to grow up.
“But none of those things happened by themselves,” she said.
“You had to figure out how to do all of it. All of this. And I was always sorry about what my father had done, everything—everything,” she said, touching the scar on his cheek.
“I knew he wanted to kill you, but then I started thinking how terrible it would be if you died. And, in Granholme, before…I thought it would be nice, if you loved me like that. And then I realized I couldn’t bear it, if you didn’t. ”
Her voice grew softer as her shyness got the better of her, and Remin held his breath, not wanting to miss a single word.
“But I think it started with Tresingale,” she finished, resting her head on his chest. “It’s your dream. And I liked your dream. I love your dream.”
“Come here,” he murmured, tugging her toward him and covering her lips in a slow, caressing kiss that singed the edges of every nerve. Lifting a hand, he traced his thumb along the delicate ridge of her jaw, feeling it move with the soft slide of her lips over his own.
“Remin,” she whispered, a musical little purr as his other hand slid down her back to her lovely round backside. Remin had not had much opportunity to contemplate his favorite parts of female anatomy, but it was so satisfying to squeeze her. “Again?”
“I think so,” he said thoughtfully, and rolled on top of her as she giggled, sliding her legs apart.
She had gained back much of the weight she had lost in the weeks since her illness, and her thighs felt so pleasingly round and smooth in his hands, he had to kiss them before he insinuated his big body between them.
She was still wet. He had filled her so many times, this was not surprising, and though he thought there was small chance his seed would catch, it gave him pleasure to sow her thoroughly.
Even if he did get her with child tonight, the main house would be done before she delivered.
He entered her in a long, deep stroke, the plump pink petals between her legs wrapping tight around him, with just enough friction to make him lightheaded.
“Oh, you’re so deep…” she moaned, her hands sliding over his back. His hard member rasped her as Remin pushed still further, sheathed to the hilt and feeling her tight channel grip him.
“Too…deep?” he managed, grinding himself there because it felt so good he could hardly stand it.
“Nooo…” she breathed, pulling him down to her, and her small, silky body lifted to push against him eagerly, a rolling motion that made him push up, in, and made them moan together as he rubbed in her. “Come deeper…”
When they first met, he thought she would have died of embarrassment before he saw her chemise.
He had never expected his shy wife to be so honest in bed.
She never lied to him, he thought, dizzy with pleasure.
Not even here. Her legs wrapped around him and her voice rose in breathless whispers to urge him to go faster, harder, her nails scoring his back until he thought he was losing his mind.
“You get too loud when I do that,” he panted, almost ready to say to hell with the entire listening world.
“But there, there—ahh, Remin, there’s something…” she gasped, her eyes squeezed shut, her face screwed up with pleasure.
“What, what?”
“When you—oh, nnnngh! Oh there, there, what you just did!”
He did it again. He had no idea what he was doing, all of this was as new to him as it was to her.
But he found something inside her, maybe that rough spot Miche had told him to find with his fingers, and angled his body to rub the hard length of himself over and over and over it, rolling his hips upward to strike it as precisely as he would jab a spear.
The effect was extraordinary. Her body bucked underneath him and she gave a gasp and her body gripped him and yanked him inside her, so hard that he barely had time to get a hand over her mouth before she came.
“Oh, there, there, there,” she sobbed breathlessly as he pounded her, pushing her through a climax that probably made Yvain and Dol think he was murdering her.
And it hardly felt any less good to him; Remin managed only a scant few seconds before he was coming so hard, it felt as if he were turning inside out, every muscle in his body straining with the force of his climax.
And as he filled her again, this time it was Ophele that had to clap her small hands over his mouth.
“You’re…poking your fingers…in a bear’s mouth?” he asked as he fell panting beside her on the bed, and she jerked them back as he bit her fingertips.
“They’re going to hear you roaring otherwise,” she said, her eyes widening with surprise and delight that he was playing with her.
“It’ll be better when the house is done,” he promised, maneuvering her into the comfortable shelter of his body.
He hadn’t slept in a bed in six months. It felt almost decadent to lie on a mattress with her soft, silky self against him.
“And a better bed. This one sounds like it’s going to come apart. ”
“Do you think anyone heard us?” she whispered, a little anxiously.
“It’s so late, everyone should long be asleep,” he evaded, though he was already planning to make sure Yvain and Dol had cleared out before she left the cottage that morning.
There was no point in trying to keep secrets from guards and servants; they saw and heard everything, and the good ones took pride in their silence.
But he thought it was probably better to introduce this idea gradually.
“I want to go see the house tomorrow with you,” she said, turning her chin up to look at him.
“Today,” he corrected. Already he could see her face better than he had a few minutes before, large eyes and red lips, swollen with his kisses. “It’s almost dawn. And only if you’re not too tired. You have to tell me if you are.”
“I will,” she whispered, and soon she was asleep beside him, her lashes curving dark over her cheeks.
To Remin, sleep seemed both very far away and entirely unnecessary.
And maybe some part of him feared that if he fell asleep, the spell would end, and he would wake to find that all of this had been a dream.
Beside him, Ophele turned on her side and reached for a pillow, hugging it to her breasts.
The familiar sight made the corner of his mouth curve upward.
Carefully, he rolled onto his side to shape himself around her.
He had never shared a bed with anyone before.
It had always been too dangerous. It was strange, but pleasant.
He just meant to enjoy the warm and lovely weight of her beside him, but the sound of her soft breathing lulled him, and he closed his eyes. Just for a few minutes.
But he could learn this. He could learn to endure happiness.
* * *
The stern discipline of a lifetime allowed Remin to wake on his own a few hours later, a slow and blissful rousing that was like coming into a dream rather than out of one.
It was a bit disorienting, with the sun too high in the sky and the cottage already a little too warm, but Ophele was in his arms and there was plenty of evidence that the previous night’s passion had been very real.
Closing his eyes, he buried his face in her hair and breathed.
For all that he’d hardly slept, he felt better rested than he had in weeks.
Normally he would have risen straightaway, but for once, he indulged himself.
Part of him wanted to claim illness and wave away the day altogether, to stay in bed with her.
An increasingly large—and hard—part of him wondered if he would hurt her if they went just one more time.
She was already naked. He was right there.
Reluctantly, he rejected the idea. There was a certain rawness to more delicate parts of his own anatomy, making him worry that he might have already been too rough with her, and besides, he was the Duke of Andelin.
He had to set an example. Bending, he kissed the top of her head and tried to slip out of bed without waking her.
He was big and the bed was small. It was tricky, trying not to jostle her.
Perversely, her eyes opened anyway.
“Mmm?” she asked sleepily, squinting. “Time izzit?”
“Midmorning.” Remin crouched beside the bed to put his face level with hers, brushing her hair back. She was barely conscious, but he found he needed to see if the magic was still there. “Wife.”
“Hmm.”
“Do you still love me in the morning?” he asked, and her lips curved.
“Yes,” she said, her eyes slitting open. “Do you still love me?”
“Yes.” He rumbled with contentment as he kissed her. “More than anything.”
She burrowed back into the covers, but he could see her smiling. He had never felt like this before. Not just in love, but safe. So many times, Ophele’s face had replaced Merrienne’s in his dreams. But now he had seen her flinging the knife away with his own eyes.
Washing, shaving, dressing, he couldn’t stop turning to look at her, in the same place she had been for the last five months, if only he had been able to reach for her sooner.
In due course he would find a hundred ways to make up for everything that happened between them.
But for now, he could only be humbly grateful that somehow, his life had led him to this place.
Tugging on a fresh jerkin, Remin shrugged at a stinging itch in his back and belted it around his waist, then went to wake her properly.
“Ophele,” he said, kneeling beside her and peeling back the covers. “Do you want to stay and sleep?”
“Nnngh.”
That sounded no-ish.