Andthiswasfriendship? Oh, Colin.
His eyes suddenly laughed into hers. “But it is not at all a spiritual interest I feel for you tonight,” he said. “I want you. In bed.”
Oh. But she wanted him too. In an impersonal way because she had denied and pushed deep her needs for longer than seven years. In a far more personal way because he was Colin and her husband and he was knee-weakeningly attractive.
“Yes,” she said.
He extinguished the candles on the dressing table as she lay down, and she heard him removing his nightclothes before joining her on the bed. She turned to him.
And he made love to her in a way that seemed to her very typical of Colin as she had come to know him. He was both gentle and thorough. He seemed to know what pleased her, whether by instinct or experience—it did not matter which—and he took his time about doing it. He made low, appreciative sounds when she caressed him with soft fingertips and light palms. And when at last he moved over her and came into her, there was all the heat of a slow passion burning between them, if those two words did not contradict each other. But she was not thinking with words. Indeed, she was not thinking at all, for there was only feeling and pleasure and pain/pleasure and the reaching for what lay beyond.
He took her there without haste, without demand, moving rhythmically in her until she clenched about him and then relaxed into the blissful oblivion that lay beyond pleasure. And he moved in her until he held deep and she felt the hot gush of his release deep inside as he sighed warm breath against her ear and his weight relaxed onto her.
They lay like that for a while as her fingers played gently through his hair, and she willed him not to move yet. It had been so long, and he was such a tender lover, her husband.
She verbalized the word in her mind.
He was herhusband, this handsome, youthful, eager, kind, firm-willed man. He was her husband and she loved him. And she realized why the loving had been so good. For at every moment, even though he had not spoken, he had been making love toher. Not just to a woman or even just to his wife, but to her, Elizabeth. She did not know how she knew. She was not analyzing her thoughts, only allowing them to flow through her mind.
After a minute or two he murmured something, uncoupled from her, and moved to her side.
“I do beg your pardon,” he said. “I must weigh a ton.”
“Only half,” she said. She felt light and a bit chilled with his weight gone, but he reached down and pulled the covers over them before turning onto his side and taking her hand and lacing his fingers with hers.
“You see?” he said, and there was humor in his voice. “Itispossible for friends to make love.”
“It is indeed,” she agreed, laughing softly, for she felt she had a secret he did not know yet. But he surely would. “It is also possible for husbands and wives.”
“It seems a bit unreal, does it not?” he said.
“That we are husband and wife?” she asked “I hope it isnotunreal. I would be living in sin.”
“Ah, but I would do the decent thing and make an honest woman of you tomorrow,” he told her.
“Well, that is reassuring,” she said.
He squeezed her hand. “Am I expected to withdraw to the other room now?” he asked her.
“Are youexpected?” She turned to face him. She could not see him clearly even though her eyes had grown somewhat accustomed to the darkness. “And what impersonal being might be doing the expecting? DoIexpect you to withdraw? No. Do Iwantyou to go? No.”
He kissed her briefly on the lips. “The thing is,” he said, and the humor was still there in his voice, “that I may want you again in the night. And you may not—”
“Or, on the other hand, I may,” she said, cutting him off.
He chuckled. “I was not a complete failure, then?” he said.
She assumed the question was rhetorical. She smiled, settled her cheek against his shoulder, and promptly fell asleep.
•••
Colin awoke when dawn was beginning to gray the window. Their fingers were still laced and her head was still against his shoulder. Some of her hair was tickling his face. Perhaps that was what had woken him. But he did not mind. He actually did not want to sleep. He wanted to savor the wonder of what had happened to him in less than twenty-four hours.
First there had been the euphoria of the wedding. That feeling had taken him a bit by surprise, actually. Ross Parmiter, his best man, had asked if he was nervous, if he was ready to run a million miles without stopping, if he was afraid he would drop the ring as Ross handed it to him, if his breakfast was sitting uneasily in his stomach, if his neckcloth was feeling tight enough to choke him. The answer to all the questions had been no. He had been exhilarated instead and impatient for the nuptials to begin. Even the church and the size of the congregation as it began to gather—somehow larger than it had seemed when they sent out invitations—had not cowed him. The arrival of his mother had almost brought him to tears. And the moment his eyes had alit upon Elizabeth…
Well. There were no words.
The rest of the day had passed in a happy blur with all the hugs and kisses and back slapping and speeches and toasts—and Elizabeth like his center of serenity in the midst of it all.
