Chapter 13 #3
How I don’t stumble over my feet when this bare-ass naked man gently tugs me to the parlor, I’ll never know. “I’m hoping you’ll be waiting with open arms to warm me when I come back,” he says over his shoulder.
Forcing my eyes away from his toned buttocks, I belatedly answer, “The fireplace would warm you better, no doubt.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that, wife.” His soft squeeze zips through my fingers and does funny things to my stomach. “Pretty sure if your soft little arms were holding me tight, I’d heat up quicker than a lit match tossed onto dried out haystacks.”
“You…I...”
“Like that idea, do you? Just you keep on thinking about it until I come back.” He throws a quick glance out the window.
“Sure hope Rosie isn’t around, because I’d hate to offend her delicate sensibilities.
” And with a sly wink and a grin, he’s out the door and down the porch steps, cock and balls swinging as he trudges into the thick snow. “God Almighty, it’s cold!”
With a bit of distance between us, my ability to think returns. “I thought you were going to run!” I call back as he cups his hands to catch snowflakes. The man is crazy as all get out with his privates exposed in this harsh weather for all to see, but he doesn’t seem to care.
“I will!” he answers over his shoulder. “How many laps around should I make?”
“Two.” I laugh. “Three if you’re brave enough!” Surely he won’t be able to stay out there for long even if running warms his blood. Closing the door before more heat escapes, I stoke the fire and head back to the kitchen for his clothes. I can’t believe he’s doing this.
No, I take that back. This is what he promised if I won, and he always keeps his word. Always.
I pause when gathering his shirt and pants. Touching the clothes he just had on isn’t the same as touching him, but it’s close. After checking to make sure he’s still outside and not peeking through a window, I bring his shirt to my nose.
The shirt itself is just a shirt. Just material and buttons. But because it’s Warren’s shirt, the comforting smell of him speeds up my heart rate while also calming it. It’s the damnedest feeling to both find comfort and be unsettled by the same thing.
If I hadn’t won, I would be the one paying up.
With a kiss.
Or kisses.
It wouldn’t be so much of a hardship to kiss him, would it? With as much care as he takes with me, I know he would stop if I asked him to.
If.
But what if I didn’t ask him to stop?
I don’t know if I’m ready for the answer to that question just yet.
When I hear boots thumping back up the porch steps, I drag in one last sniff of his shirt and head towards the door just as Warren barrels through it.
Blue lips, red skin, and—good Christ. How on earth is his cock still that big?
If not for the violet tinge to it, I’d never have guessed it’d been out in the elements.
And if it’s that large when he’s cold, what will it look like when he’s… aroused?
I shoo him to the fireplace and shove his clothes at him. “Here. You need to get warm.”
“Th-thank you kindly, wife. Need to take my b-boots off, though.
Got snow all in ‘em because I tripped the last time around and it feels like my t-toes are about to freeze off.” He hobbles on one foot, then the other, paying absolutely no mind to that massive beast dangling between his legs as he tugs his boots off.
They land with a thud nearby, covering up my quiet sigh of relief when he reaches for his pants.
“How many times did you do?”
“F-f-four,” he boasts through chattering teeth as he struggles to grasp the shirt buttons. “One more than you t-told me to. Didn’t think I c-could do it, did you?”
“Let me, you silly man.” He smiles bashfully when I bat away his fumbling fingers. “I can’t believe you, running out in the cold like that without any clothes. Never in my life have I ever seen such a thing.”
Warren just grins at my scolding the entire time as I make quick work of his buttons. With the help of the fire, his shivers taper off some by the time I finish, but a quick look at his feet has me hurrying to our bedroom for a pair of socks.
“Here. Put these on before you lose your toes.”
He drops in the rocking chair to do as I say. “Can you get me a b-blanket?”
I pull one from the sofa and tuck it around his shoulders. “Do you want something warm to drink?”
Warren silently shakes his head, but when I move towards the sofa, he catches me about the waist and tugs me onto his lap.
“What are you doing?” I protest with a surprised laugh as he cocoons us inside the blanket. “You’re too cold to sit on! And it’s your own fault for going out in the snow!”
“Mhmm,” he moans into my hair, holding me tightly to prevent my escape. “You’re so warm. Besides, it was worth it.”
“Really?” I reply wryly, settling against his chest. His skin is still chilled beneath his shirt, but at least his stammer seems to be fading. “How can you say the possibility of losing your fingers”—or cock—“was worth it?”
“Because, wife. It got you in my lap, didn’t it?” The blanket pools at our waists as he cups my cheek with a still slightly cold hand. “And when I took off my clothes for you to see all of me, I’m almost certain that wasn’t fear on your face when you looked me up and down. Was it?”
He’s right. I didn’t feel any fear at all because I know his nakedness didn’t mean I would be hurt or taken against my will. “No, I’m not afraid of you,” I whisper.
Something settles in Warren’s warm brown eyes at my admission.
“Good.” His voice, so deep and husky, gives me the chills as if I had been the one running mad in the snow.
“You’ll never have cause to fear me, Mara.
And make no mistake, wife, I wanted us both to win.
I wanted you to look at me without clothes and not be scared, and I wanted to kiss you.
One of those came true. Nothing else in this world would make me happier than for the other to follow suit.
But when I do finally kiss you, I want it to be because you want me just as much as I want you. ”
“I…I do want you.” His pupils expand at my admission and hide all the golden flecks in the thinned ring of brown.
Now it’s my turn to stumble over my words as his thumb strokes back and forth.
Maybe the heat of the fire is what steals my thoughts and has me swaying towards him.
Or maybe it’s just Warren. “I mean…I think I…I want you to kiss me, too.”
“Are you sure?”
Something gallops beneath my palm.
His heartbeat.
How did my hands get here? I don’t remember touching him, but now I tangle my fingers in his shirt and pull him ever so closer.
“No one’s ever kissed me before. And if anyone did, I would want it to be my…
my husband.” Shyness almost stops me, but it feels so right to call him that. He’s mine. My husband.
“Mara.” A guttural groan bursts from him as he presses his brow to mine. “Again. Say it again.”
“Kiss me.”
“No.” Angling his head, he nuzzles my nose. “I mean yes. Always that. But tell me the last part again.”
“Husband.” I breathe it into his mouth as he steals the word from me. “I want you to kiss me, husband.”
“Wife.” A million emotions all wrapped up into that single rough word.
The swell of butterflies explodes in my stomach at his reverent tone as he murmurs something else, but I don’t hear it.
I’m too lost in his overwhelming presence as he stakes his claim, capturing my lips with a kiss so soft and small that it’s over before it truly begins.
Why did he stop? I barely got to experience it.
“Only one,” he says roughly. “That’s what you said.”
I did, but...I want more. And judging by the muted wildness in his eyes, so does he.
“To begin with.” I whisper his words back to him, and this time, I’m the one who leans in first. He deepens our connection, and although his hands never stray from my face, I feel him everywhere.
The clean scent of him in my nose. The prickly texture of his facial scruff to my lips.
The low groans of his desire in my ears.
Waves of unfamiliar sensation crash over me, and I anchor myself with clenched fists of his shirt as I clumsily give myself to him and accept him in return. It’s altogether perfect and altogether too much because now there’s no escaping the truths I rejected from him at every turn.
I’m not broken or dirty in my husband’s eyes.
I am simply his.
He eases away but presses lingering kisses across my chin and cheeks. “Hey, now,” he croons. “What are these tears for? Did you not like it?”