CHAPTER 37 - Come again?
DALE HALF COLLAPSEDon top of Olivia, barely remembering to support part of his weight on his elbows to avoid crushing her. He remained inside her. Even after the most intense climax of his life, he couldn’t bear to disengage. His body might be sated for the moment, but he was keenly aware of another kind of hunger. A hunger of the soul. A need that went beyond the physical.
When had he ever felt so content, happy even? Never. In his youth, he had enjoyed the uncomplicated couplings with courtesans and mistresses. They had satisfied his body, but it had always been a transaction. Bedding was a sort of sport, and his emotions had never been involved. Later, with Eloise... he cut off that line of thought. He had loved Eloise, and to think about her at this moment seemed like a betrayal to both her and Livvy.
Generous, passionate, adventuresome Livvy.
She didn’t seem in a hurry to part from him, either. Her hands caressed his back in soothing motions, while below, her feet slid languorously up and down his legs. It was heaven. He felt accepted. No, more than that, he felt wanted. Himself. Not the wealthy duke, or the husband who had to be tolerated. The man.
He finally gathered the willpower to lift his head and roll over with her still gathered close to his body. The motion made him slide from her sweet depths, and he grieved the loss. Apparently she did too, because she gave a small moan, and her internal muscles tried to hug onto him. They lay side by side, their limbs intimately intertwined.
He brushed a lock of hair from her face. “Are you all right?”
“Uh hum,” she purred.
He smiled. “No regrets then?”
“None. Unless you have them.”
“No, I have no regrets. This was...” He tried for a word that could describe what had just passed between them, but nothing could adequately express it, “extraordinary. Thank you.” He deposited a kiss on the tip of her nose.
Olivia smiled. “No thanks necessary, Dale. I enjoyed it just as much. Which is as it should be. ‘El amor jamás es un favor,’” she murmured softly, almost to herself.
But he heard her and understood the Spanish words. They sent a prickling sensation akin to panic throughout his body that dissolved the languid calm of the moment before.
He looked at a spot over her head. “Love is never a favor? No, but sex often is.”
She lifted her head to look at him, surprised. “Is that all this is then? Sex?”
He didn’t know why he felt the need to warn her not to speak of love. “No, it’s far more than that,” he said seriously, looking at her. “I should know. I’ve had plenty of sex without love. But I don’t know what it is. Friendship... passion, perhaps?”
“Of course. That is just a line from a song. It popped into my head when you said thank you. I didn’t know you spoke Spanish.”
Now she looked ashamed of having spoken. He felt like an ogre. He wanted to dispel the shadows from her eyes.
“My nurse was from Spain. I called her Nana. She spent more time with me than my actual mother.”
“You are full of enchanting surprises,” she said, a hint of hesitation shadowing her smile.
“Me? I am quite boring, I assure you.”
She laughed, and the sound lifted his spirits. Maybe he had not hurt her feelings after all.
“Ha! You are the least boring man I know. Just today, I found out that you play the piano, you speak Spanish, and you're an amazing lover.”
He didn’t quite believe that last part, but he wanted to. So much. “I don’t know about that, but I am happy if I please you.”
He said the words lightly, but they meant the world to him. After being so thoroughly incapable of pleasing his wife, Livvy’s pleasure was everything to him.
