Page 68 of Miss Delectable
She’d lost count of the times he’d sent her spinning off into bliss, sometimes on a gale-force wind, sometimes on a gentle breeze. And always, always, he’d been there to hold her and soothe her when passion eased its grip.
Orion Goddard was a lavishly considerate lover, tender, skilled, affectionate, and so… so at ease with the whole business.
No, that wasn’t quite right. He was at easewith himself. His day could not be ruined by an insinuation that he’d used too much flour in his béchamel sauce. He could admit errors and fears, and he wasn’t shocked that Ann had chosen a career in the kitchen over rural domesticity.
But then, rural domesticitywith Orionhadn’t been among the options she’d considered. Was it an option now? Did she want it to be?
“Buttered gingerbread,” he said, stroking Ann’s bum with a warm hand. “With mulled cider if you have it, a restorative after our exertions.”
His touch was like buttered gingerbread, just as rich, delectable, and smooth. Ann peered down at him, for she was still sprawled on his chest. “You are hungry?”
“My appetite for certain pleasures in present company knows no limit, but a shared snack would be a paltry consolation for having to leave this bed.”
So that’s what came next. He offered his flattery with a brisk little pat on her backside, and still, Ann did not want to give up the warmth of his embrace.
“I have misplaced my self-discipline,” she said, forcing herself to sit up, which put her nether parts in contact with his breeding organs. Rye brushed her braid back over her shoulder, as casually as if ladies perched naked upon him regularly.
Ann doubted that was the case. His intimate company was skilled, but Orion would never be profligate with his affections.
“What?” he asked, leaning up to wrap his arms around her. “Do you need to hear that this was special, Annie? That you have forever altered my definition of lovemaking?”
He was special. She was too much of a coward to say that. “You make me feel special.”
“Because you are, and if a lover can’t remind a lady that she’s precious and dear, he has no business putting himself on offer to her. If he can provide her such assurances, she might like the fellow, but only a little and only in the privacy of her thoughts.”
“You are awful.”
He kissed her nose. “Shall I give the command to charge, Annie?”
“Please.”
He spoke close to her ear, not quite a whisper. “I like to think the lovemaking doesn’t end when we leave the bed, just as it didn’t end when we slept side by side. Passion ebbed, temporarily satisfied, but the closeness and warm regard lingered. I want to see your kitchen, Annie Pearson, the kitchen where you make your first pot of tea each morning, where you rummage for bread and butter on Sunday evenings.”
She held him tightly while another bout of tears threatened. “I’ll show you my kitchen, but I fear somebody must rebraid my hair before I can venture from this room.”
“You are in luck, for braiding is among my meager store of skills.”
He had many skills, not least among them the knack of assisting a lady into her clothes while he grumbled about the new boy—Victor—who refused to attend lessons. He chattered about Mrs. Murphy’s follower and about his old cavalry sword having mysteriously gone missing, not that he much cared for the sword itself, but the boys had no need of it, and the damned thing was sharp.
Ann did not allow him to replace his eye patch—the house wasn’t brightly lit—but she did hand it back to him before they left the bedroom.
“Not so fast,” Rye said when she would have opened the door. “First, a hug for courage and a kiss for luck.”
The lucky kiss turned into a sweet, hot, tender reprise of the kisses they’d shared in bed, and the hug for courage was fortifying but inadequate.
To withstand Jules’s latest fit of pique in the kitchen would take determination and guile, but Ann was completely without weapons when it came to withstanding the greater threat to her peace that Orion Goddard posed with his tenderness and passion.
She was still puzzling over that conundrum when Rye sat with her at the kitchen table enjoying fresh, buttered gingerbread and mugs of steaming mulled cider.
“You’ve been working on menus,” he said, eyeing the ingredient lists and scribblings Ann had spread out on the table the previous evening.
He leafed through the pages, one by one, studying her recipes. “You are very thorough, but then, I knew that.”
“I made my usual early call on my aunt this morning. She’s planning a formal dinner for thirty, and everything must be perfect. I provide the menus, and she crows about her talented niece to any who will listen.” Or that was the plan. Ann was no longer confident that a lot of officers and their wives were much interested in fancy dishes and pretty centerpieces, for none of them had ever asked to consult with her following one of Aunt’s dinners.
They mentioned their menus to Melisande, who conveyed requests to Ann only indirectly.
Orion perused the nearest recipe. “No fricassee of gryphon wings or chimera tails in aspic?”
