“I’m not sure I can reproduce,” he replies. “Is that important to you?”
I gaze at him, not bothering to conceal my shock. “Well… yes. I was hoping we would eventually have a family. Fill this place with little blue-haired children. What makes you think you’re infertile? You never mentioned that before. You only talked about the incense and how it prevents conception.”
He pulls out of me hastily, and his cum spills onto the table. We both stare at my swollen, gaping pussy, creamy with his release, and at the white pool on the dark wooden surface.
“Fuck, you’re beautiful,” he says.
“Don’t change the subject, Beresford. Why can’t you have children?”
He hikes up his trousers and buttons them. A few damp spots seep through, since he didn’t wipe himself off first, but he doesn’t seem to care. “It’s complicated.”
“Part of your past?”
“Yes.”
I’m not supposed to ask about his past. I’m supposed to accept his secrets, as he accepts mine. But this one involves me. It changes the vision I had, the picture of our future together.
“Maybe we could visit a physician,” I venture. “See if there’s anything that can be done.”
“Leave it alone, Sybil. Please.”
The ache in his voice stirs my sympathy. “I will… for now.” I jump down from the table, knowing that his cum is on my wedding dress, exactly where it should be. “Will you show me the rest of the house?”
He brightens, grateful that I’m letting it go, though there’s a sorrowful torment in his eyes.
I don’t want an argument to sour our first night together in our home, but neither do I plan to give up the subject entirely. We’ll be circling back to it another day. Maybe I’ll speak to my mother first and get her advice on how to approach the matter.
For now, I need to reassure him.
I take his arm and kiss the curve of his bicep. “I would have married you either way, you know. Whatever my future looks like, I want you in it.”
He looks down at me, his eyes searching mine. “You do love me,” he murmurs, his voice tinged with wonder.
“Of course I do, silly man.”
“It’s just that…” He hesitates and clears his throat, as if he wants to be careful what he says next. “I knew things about love, and I thought I understood it, but I’m realizing that I didn’t fully grasp what it meant until now.”
I stroke his sinewy forearm as we walk back into the front hall. “My mother says that married people either become more and more in love with each other, or move farther and farther away from each other. She said one takes more work than the other. And you certainly put in good work back there.” I jerk my head toward the dining room.
My praise earns me a grin from my husband, and inwardly I congratulate myself for driving the shadows out of his eyes.
We explore the mansion together, navigating long hallways rich with heavy crimson wallpaper and dark wood floors, trudging up staircases of pale stone with blood-red carpet, poking our heads into paneled nooks and cozy crevices.
One of my favorites is a pillared room tiled in black and white squares, with an octagonal pool set into the floor and a glass dome overhead to let in natural light. Steam rises from the water, and there are marble benches just beneath the surface where people can sit, relax, and enjoy the heat.
Another room contains a magnificent piano, set up near two-story arched windows and accessorized with a beautifully engraved bench. The legs of the piano are carved so that it looks as if it’s upheld by tree branches. Threads of real gold twine along the piano’s legs and decorate its top. When Beresford tells me that it’s mine, one of the wedding surprises he bought for me, I squeal with delight.
The house’s library is beautiful, with the same extravagant two-story ceilings as the rest of the first floor, but it is poorly stocked. Most of the shelves are empty, and the others contain books about business and finance. I have trouble imagining Beresford reading those tomes. In fact, they look quite dusty, as if they haven’t been touched in a long time.
“Are these for your business?” I ask.
“They used to be. I don’t need them now.”
“Then why keep them?”
He looks surprised by the question, and after a moment’s contemplation, he says, “Sentiment, I suppose. But we can buy other books—as many as you like.”
“Books are so expensive, though.”
