Page 50 of Unmasking the Silver Heiress
"You can have this anytime you want it," he whispered, his breath hot on her cheek. "You must know that."
"I didn't," she managed, closing her eyes and indulging in the sensation of it, the unbelievable intimacy of sharing her whole body with another person, of giving herself so fully to him and him to her.
She loved that he seemed to be equally in the thrall of pleasure, that her body was the answer to his satisfaction, that he seemed to lose a bit of his ever-present control, groaning in pleasure, picking up speed.
"I cannot get enough of you," he confessed, dropping his forehead onto hers, driving into her each time a little harder, a little more demanding. "Oh, God."
She wanted to respond, but the words turned to sparkling dust in her mind, her thoughts clouding over much the way they had a few moments prior, when she had been on the stool. It was all she could do to meet his motions, to invite him into her with unbridled welcome as his pace became more frenzied, his breathing shallower.
The second wave of pleasure that washed over her was not so strong nor so debilitating as the first, though it was glorious all the same. She held tight to him as he found his own climax, his body shaking with the force of it as he drove the last of his vigor into her body with a moan of sweet release.
They were both damp, covered in a thin sheen of sweat from their coupling. It made their skin glimmer in the firelight, their limbs entangled over the rumpled silk sheets as they both struggled to catch their breath.
Nell almost protested when he slid off her, dropping onto his side and into the pillows. However, it seemed he did not intend to part from her so easily. He tugged her hand so that she would roll into him, face-to-face, so that he might study her in that way of his.
She could look into his eyes for eternity, she thought. There was a galaxy of color within, and just as much mystery as a sky full of stars. She thought she had never seen any work of art as beautiful as his eyes, and yet still, she could not stop her own from drooping shut, heavier and heavier, until there was nothing but his embrace in her dreams.
Chapter 22
It took close to an hour before Nate felt the desire to make his way under the sheets. The fervor he had been worked into might as well have set him ablaze for a time. But, he supposed, returning to earth was a natural consequence of attaining a visit to heaven, and so he carefully rolled out of bed and considered the best way to work the coverlet out from under his sleeping wife without disturbing her.
He did his best, but in the end, she stirred anyway, her dark lashes blinking against her cheeks as she opened her eyes and smiled sleepily up at him.
"I'm just arranging the blankets," he explained in a gentle whisper. "Can I get you anything? Water?"
She nodded, reaching up to rub at her eyes with a broad yawn, that bright red ribbon still clinging to her neck.
"Might want to take your jewelry off," he suggested with a smile, turning to fetch the carafe of fresh water from the worktop near the fireplace. He poured two glasses and when he turned back, she was carefully setting the ribbon and her pearl earrings onto the nightstand, clutching the blanket up to her chest in some instinct of belated modesty.
"Not the ring?" he asked, noting the way it glinted in the firelight as he passed her the glass.
"No. I am not ready to part with it," she admitted, turning a bashful smile into the rim of her glass. "I wore it in the bath earlier."
"Did you?" he chuckled, delighted by the idea of it, if not the practicality. He turned and walked to the wardrobe, drawing out a night-rail for her and dressing gowns for them both, which he draped over the foot of the bed. He was in no particular hurry to clothe himself again. "I have a matching band myself. I was going to wait to begin wearing it until yours was finished. I'm pleased that I now can."
"Does it have the same engraving inside?" she asked softly, those wide gray eyes searching his so hopefully as he climbed back into the bed next to her.
"Of course," he said, reaching forward to stroke the side of her face. Never mind that it had been a whim to commission the engraving, something he had barely thought about at the time. He had ordered those rings weeks ago, back when his choices regarding Nell were made as more a matter of doing things the proper way rather than sentimentality.
None of that mattered. It meant something now.
She smiled, a blush spreading over the bridge of her nose, clearly very pleased to hear it. Making her smile like that was more gratifying by the day.
"I suppose I ought to write my aunt in the morning," she said, finishing her glass of water and turning her bare back to him for a moment to place it next to her jewelry on the nightstand. "I shall say that our invitation has been acquired, and damn you very much for buying me ugly gowns all my life."
Nate coughed on the unexpected burst of laughter that escaped him. "Perhaps something a bit more gentle," he suggested, unable to hide his amusement.
She turned back to him with a little smile, her hair in wild disarray around her, like some wild woman of the forest. "I would never," she assured him.
"It is my pleasure to be party to your blossoming, my dear," he said, leaning back onto the pillows and holding his arm out in an invitation for her to join him. When she did, curling into his side and laying her head on his chest, that spill of coffee-brown curls twining down her back, he felt for the briefest moment as though his heart ached.
"Nathaniel ..." she said softly, as though she was not sure if she should speak or not. "I want to know you. Physically, we have been intimate, but so much of you is still a mystery to me. I want to know the good and the bad, which I vowed to take in stride when we wed. I wish to truly be your wife."
"Youaremy wife," he responded immediately, then paused, considering her words. "What would you know of me?"
"Everything," she breathed, stroking her hand over the expanse of his chest. "Why did you become a politician? Why join the Silver Leaf? Why would you leave this beautiful home to decay? You are an enigma to me, even in the wake of our present intimacy, and I feel I am a simple and uninteresting thing next to you."
He considered this, weighing his options for a response in his head. "You are far from simple," he said first. "You may not have a tragic past and an air of mystery, but that is hardly a negative thing. You surprise me every day. The urge to know you completely is one I have felt as well. Perhaps we have been too consumed with the intrigue around us to converse as a husband and wife ought."
