All for her. He slipped a hand around to the front of her body and found that little pearl he loved to tease. The slightest circleof pressure around it produced a little cry from her lovely lips, and he almost lost himself in it. Couldn’t hold on anymore. He thrust again, then faster, harder, his hand working her toward the pleasure he would soon take for himself. Each slap of his hips against her arse, a note of pure abandon; the moan and cry that flew from her lips when she found release, a lovely lyric. The grunt of his own shattering orgasm as he pulled from her body and spent on the sheets, a crescendo of perfect harmony.
Rough, heavy breaths rent the air—his and hers. Barely able to stand, he kissed whatever skin his lips could reach. She laughed, a huffy sound, and reached for him, her own movements heavy, lazy.
With a grunt, he hefted himself onto the bed, gathered her to him, and dragged them both toward the top of it, tucking their sated bodies beneath the blankets, her back pressed against his front. He kissed her neck, her shoulder, wrapped his hand around her gorgeous, thick hair. Could he reach her jaw? He could. So he kissed that, too. And he continued kissing as the heaviness of satiation settled across him like a velvet cloak, and he whispered to her.
No, he sang to her. A song that came to him from the fog of sated pleasure, the haze of satisfaction. “The lord hid in the shadows, made darkness his domain. But his tender bride knew sorrow, and how to heal the pain.” Words only for her, whispered into the shell of her ear as his hand stroked and teased, circled and worshipped. She partnered his thoughtless lyrics with little mewling moans of pleasure, with gusts of his name.
“Atlas, oh Atlas.” She rolled her hips against his hand, rolled her backside against his hips.
He nipped her shoulder, tweaked her nipple, and she shattered, conscious thought gone with a cry. She spun in his hold to bury her face into the cradle of his arm beneath her, herbody still bucking and rolling like the sea, and when he kissed her nape, he tasted the salt of her sweat. The last time he’d been on a boat, in the ocean, he’d been wounded, casting up his accounts, wishing someone would just throw him overboard and be done with it. To return home, to his family, as a burden instead of a helping hand—impossible. A nightmare.
Since then, he’d not thought of the sea without thinking of pain, of failure. But now, now, every time he thought of that vast expanse, of salt and the rolling waves beneath his body, he’d think of Clara, not of pain, but of beauty and pleasure and the trust a woman put into a man’s hand when she opened her body for him. Words sang around the edges of his fading consciousness.Home was lost and beauty dead until she gave me life.Incomplete. Songs were more than single sentences. But they started somewhere, and those words, Clara in his arms, felt more like a beginning than it should.
The sun peeped in through the window, shy, as if it were a society gossip, eager to discover the events of the night before and not be caught. Clara would give it news aplenty. Despite the warm heaven of Atlas’s sleeping arms, she rose, folding herself upright and peering at her husband’s legs. Covered by the quilt, unfortunately. And when there was sun enough to see properly. How very unaccommodating of him. She rolled gently out of the bed, found her poor wrinkled shift, and pulled it on, then padded across the room to the wardrobe. She opened a small drawer, it’sshushthe only noise in the room. Where was it? Ah, yes, just there—a small green bottle stoppered with cork.
She grasped the oil and shut the drawer, then padded back to bed. Squeaks and creaks and groans as she crawled atop it,settled herself in a cross-legged position at her husband’s hips. She glared at the blanket. Quite in the way. But no hardship to her to get rid of it. Slowly, though, so as not to wake him. But… perhaps she did wish to wake him. She touched her lips. They curved so easily into a smile. Made her smile deepen, grow. Inside, too.
The sheet lay bunched under his arm, just under his chest, and she allowed herself a moment to appreciate that lovely bit of Atlas before she curled her fingers around the sheet edge and pulled.
His eyes flashed open. He grinned. “Good morning.”
“The best of mornings. You underestimate.”
He rolled onto his elbow, his palm supporting his head and pulled her down for a kiss, his other hand wrapped around her neck. Firm lips, warm Atlas. Her heart danced.
But she had a mission. She broke the kiss and nudged him to his back with a palm to his chest. “Stay just there. No objections, either. They’ll sail in one ear and drop out the other.”
“Can’t object when a beautiful woman demands I recline before her in bed.” He folded an arm behind his head, and,holy Hepplewhite, the ripple of muscle beneath skin stole her breath. Stole her soul, likely. Soldered for life to that round bit of flesh. So much strength, and he bent it all to her will.
Her throat became parchment. Her hands tingled to touch.
No, the cool glass bottle weighing her shift in her lap said,you’ve a goal, a purpose—keep it in mind.
Yes. For him, for that aching limb. Then, later. For her, hisotheraching limb.
She plucked the bottle from her lap, held it up. “Oil. With various herbs. Quite fragrant.” She held up her hand with the shortened finger. “It aches. Has since it happened, as you can imagine. And it feels lovely to massage it a bit. With the oil.Do you”—her gaze flicked to his thigh—“possess any similar habits?”
The easy grin, the soft jaw—disappeared as his brows slashed downward, as his gaze honed in on the bottle in her hand. “I’m quite well. No need to?—”
“Bollocks. As you would say.” She pulled the sheet lower, despite the distraction the plane of muscle that functioned as his abdomen caused.
His fingers joined hers on the sheet edge, pulling back up.
“Modest suddenly?” she asked. He scowled. “Keep your modesty. I just want your leg.”
She dove over him, grabbed the side of the sheet dangling off the bed, and yanked it across his body. He still clutched the sheet to his chest, so it covered his shaft. Pity. But she’d tease the entire sheet away from him later.
After.
The wound stretched from the top of his hip to his knee, and the thickness of the scar tissue twisting up his leg spoke to the depth of the gash. Much deeper than the other wounds he’d suffered, much worse. The bullet hole on his shoulder seemed a tiny, insignificant thing in comparison. And the small slashes littered about his chest and back mere cuts, claw marks from an angry cat.
A thrusted bayonet intending to kill.
A miracle Atlas lay like a god on this bed beside her. Alive. Able to move, mostly, as he pleased.
She wrapped her hands around his thigh, smoothed them up and down, learning the feel of his scar, of his muscle. Knotted where it should not be, hard as rock even relaxed. And he was relaxing beneath her touch, every other muscle in his body releasing the tension that had sprung to life within him as soon as she’d dove for the sheet and unveiled his body like ahousemaid removing a dust cloth from a bit of furniture long in disuse.
She uncorked the bottle then paused. “May I? Please? I think it might bring you some relief.”
