Chapter 29
His mouth claimed hers, and Chloe melted against him.
This was different from the chaste kisses they had shared before—this was hunger, raw and demanding.
Edward’s tongue swept inside, tasting, exploring, claiming.
His hands slid down her back, pressing her closer until she could feel the hard ridge of his manhood through the layers of their clothing.
She fumbled with the ties of his shirt, her fingers clumsy with need. The fabric parted, revealing the broad expanse of his chest, dotted with dark hair that tapered off and disappeared beneath his kilt. Chloe traced the lines of his muscles, feeling them contract under her touch.
Edward groaned into her mouth, his hands finding the lace at the back of her gown and tugging it loose. The gown pooled at her feet, leaving her bare to his gaze. The cool air raised her nipples into tight peaks, and Edward’s eyes darkened as he looked at her.
“Beautiful,” he breathed, before lowering his head to take one breast into his mouth. The wet heat of his tongue against her sensitive flesh made her cry out.
He suckled greedily, his teeth scraping lightly against her nipple. Chloe’s hands tangled in his hair, holding him to her as pleasure spiraled through her body.
His mouth moved to her other breast, giving it the same thorough attention while his hand slid down her stomach, through the curls between her thighs. When his fingers found her sex, she bucked against him. He circled her sensitive nub, teasing, tormenting, until she was writhing against his hand.
“Edward, please,” she gasped, her hips moving in rhythm with his strokes.
The fur coverlet was soft against her back as he laid her down. Edward stood over her for a moment, his gaze intense and possessive, before shedding his remaining clothes. His manhood sprang free, thick and hard, with the tip already beading with precum.
Chloe’s breath caught. She’d never seen men like this, never her husband, never the man who was meant to be hers completely. Edward knelt between her thighs, his hands spreading her open.
“So wet,” he murmured, before lowering his head. The first touch of his tongue against her sex made her arch off the bed. He licked her from entrance to clit, his movements slow and deliberate. Chloe’s hands fisted in the furs as he explored every fold, every sensitive spot.
When he sucked her nub into his mouth and flicked it with his tongue, she saw stars. The pressure built inside her, a tight coil of pleasure winding tighter and tighter. Edward slid one finger inside her, then another, curling them to find that spot that made her gasp.
“Edward!” she cried out, her hips grinding against his face. “I am…”
He doubled his efforts, his tongue working her while his fingers pumped in and out. The orgasm crashed over her, wave after wave of pleasure that left her shaking and breathless. Edward continued licking her through it, drawing out her pleasure until she was limp beneath him.
He moved up her body, his manhood nudging against her entrance. Chloe wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him closer. She was ready, more than ready for this.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice thick with emotion. Chloe met his gaze as he slowly pushed inside. The stretch was exquisite, a slight burn that quickly gave way to pleasure. He filled her, his hips pressing against hers.
Edward began to move, his strokes slow at first, then faster, deeper. Each thrust hit that perfect spot inside her, building her pleasure again. The sounds of their bodies meeting—skin slapping against skin, the wet squelch of her folds around his manhood—filled the room.
Chloe met his thrusts, her hips rising to meet his. She dug her nails into his shoulders, marking him as hers. Edward’s mouth found hers again, the kiss messy and desperate. His breathing grew ragged, his movements more erratic.
“Chloe,” he gasped against her lips. “I cannae hold it in.”
“Let go,” she urged, her own release building. “Come with me.”
His hand slid between them, his thumb finding her nub. The additional stimulation sent her over the edge. She cried out his name as her folds clenched around his manhood, milking him. Edward groaned, his thrusts becoming shallow as he emptied himself inside her.
For long moments, they lay tangled together, their bodies slick with sweat. Edward’s weight provided a comforting pressure, his heart pounding against her chest. Chloe traced patterns on his back, feeling the muscles gradually relax.
He rolled to his side, pulling her with him so they faced each other. The fire had burned low, but the heat between them was undeniable. Edward brushed a stray strand of hair from her face, his touch infinitely gentle.
“Chloe,” he said softly, his voice thick with emotion. “Me wife.”
She smiled, a genuine smile that reached her eyes. “Me husband.”
He kissed her then, a slow, tender kiss that promised many more nights like this to come.
The shadows danced on the walls, but for the first time since their marriage, Chloe was not afraid of the darkness.
Not with Edward’s arms wrapped around her, not with his scent still on her skin, not with the warmth of his cum still leaking from her folds.
“Will ye stay here?” Chloe asked, eventually, into the quiet.
“Aye.” His arm tightened around her. “I mean to be here every night after this one, as well, if ye’ll have me.”
“I will have ye.” She tipped her head back to look at him, finding none of the old caution left in his face, none of the bracing for a retreat that never quite came. “Every night, Edward. For as long as ye’re willin’ to stay.”
“Then that’s a good long while,” he said, and pressed a kiss to her hair, and neither of them pulled away from the other for the rest of that night.
Edward woke before the light did, which was nothing new, except that for the first time in longer than he could easily count, he woke to Chloe’s weight warm against his side instead of an empty half of the bed and the old, familiar quiet he’d built his entire life around.
He lay still a moment, in no hurry at all to move, and then eased out from under the blankets carefully enough that she did not stir, and pulled on his shirt and boots in the grey half-light, and left her sleeping.
He found Duncan already in the yard, going over the tack with two of the younger guards, the morning still cool enough that everyone’s breath showed faintly in the air.
“Ye’re up early,” Duncan said, not looking up from the bridle in his hands. “For a man who spent yesterday killin’ his father-in-law and the day before that nearly gettin’ his wife kidnapped.”
“Someone has to see the grain counts done.”
“Aye, the grain counts. That’s what’s got ye up before the sun.” Duncan set the bridle down and looked at him properly, and whatever he saw in Edward’s face made him grin, slow and entirely unrepentant. “Ye look like a man who slept well.”
“Mind yer own tack, Duncan.”
“I am minding it. I can mind me tack and yer good mood at the same time, me Laird, I am nae so simple as that.” He picked the bridle back up, still grinning.
“Mrs. Donnan’s already told the whole kitchen ye will be smilin’ by breakfast. First time in a fortnight, she said.
Made a wager with Isla over how long it’d last.”
“There’s nae wager on me temperament.”
“There’s always a wager on yer temperament. Ye’ve just nae been payin’ attention to it before now.” Duncan handed the bridle off to one of the younger guards and fell into step beside Edward as he crossed toward the granary. “How’s the Lady this mornin’?”
“Sleepin’.”
“Good. She’s earned it.” Some of the teasing dropped out of Duncan’s voice. “I meant to say, yesterday, in the clearin’. I did right, turnin’ back for ye instead of stayin’ to fight.”
“Ye did right,” Edward said it without hesitation, because he’d turned the question over in his mind more than once. “Ye brought me there in time. That’s the whole of what mattered.”
“I’ve thought on it since, that’s all. Whether I ought to have stayed.”
“If ye’d stayed, ye’d likely be dead, and I’d have arrived to find one less sword standin’ and nae faster than I did regardless.” Edward clapped a hand briefly to his shoulder. “Ye did right, Duncan. I will nae say it twice.”
“Ye just said it twice.”
“Daenae push yer luck.”
They reached the granary, and Edward went through the morning’s business the way he always did.
The steward’s tallies revealed a dispute between two tenants over a fence line that had apparently been simmering since before the wedding and showed no sign of resolving itself without his direct help.
A message from Hendry’s lands confirming the boundary dispute from days earlier had been settled quietly.
Ordinary matters. The kind of business that had filled his days for thirteen years and had, for most of that time, been all that filled them.
He found himself hurrying through the fence dispute faster than the tenants likely appreciated, and cutting the steward’s report shorter than was strictly proper, entirely because some part of him kept measuring the morning by how much longer stood between himself and the moment he would be free to go find Chloe and William again.
“Ye’re doin’ somethin’ new,” Duncan said when Edward had signed off on the last of the tallies rather quickly.
“Doin’ what?”
“Rushin’ through yer own castle’s business like a man with somewhere better to be.” Duncan did not bother hiding his amusement this time. “Which, I suppose, ye have. Go on, then. I will finish the rest of it. Tell the Lady I said good mornin’.”
Edward left him to it and crossed the yard toward the keep, taking the back stairs up past the kitchens, where Isla was already elbow-deep in bread dough.
She called out something cheerful after him that he only half caught, and up again past the solar, until he reached the nursery door and found it standing open.
Chloe was already there ahead of him, seated in the low chair by the window with William settled against her shoulder, one hand moving slowly and steadily over his back.
“Is he sleepin’?”
“Tryin’ to convince himself he wants to.” Chloe kept her voice low. “He fought his mornin’ nap somethin’ fierce. I think yesterday frightened more out of him than he’s got words to say.”
Edward crossed the room quietly and crouched by the chair, close enough to see William’s face, eyes half-shut, one small fist curled loose against Chloe’s collar.
He reached out and let the boy’s fingers close around one of his own, the same gesture he’d made a hundred times now without ever quite tiring of it.
William stirred at the touch, blinked up at him, and made a small, considering sound before his eyes drifted shut again.
“He kens ye,” Chloe said, watching. “Every time. However tired he is.”
“He kens ye better.”
“He kens both of us. That’s the whole point of it, isnae it?
” She shifted him slightly, settling him deeper against her shoulder.
“Tyler came by earlier, before ye finished with the tallies. Sat right there in the doorway and made faces at him for the better part of ten minutes, tryin’ to get him to laugh. ”
“Did it work?”
“Eventually. Took Tyler pullin’ the most undignified expression I’ve ever seen on a grown man, but aye, he laughed. Loud enough that Melodie came runnin’ from down the hall to see what the fuss was.”
Edward huffed something close to a laugh himself, still crouched by the chair, still holding onto the small fist wrapped around his finger. “I will have to see this expression for meself.”
“Ye’ll have to ask him nicely. He’s rather proud of it.”
William’s breathing had slowed and, now properly asleep at last, neither of them moved to disturb it.
The room was quiet around them. The fire burned low in the grate, the afternoon light streaming softly through the window—all that was left to do was nothing, and neither of them wanted to be anywhere else.
“He’s safe,” Chloe said, after a while, quiet, more to herself than to Edward. “Truly safe. I keep havin’ to remind meself of it.”
“Aye.” Edward’s hand tightened slightly around William’s fist. “So do I.”
She looked at him then, and whatever passed between them needed no further words attached to it.
He reached up and rested his free hand against the back of her neck, and she leaned into it, and the three of them stayed like that a long while, the fire ticking low, William sleeping on undisturbed between them.