“We made enough for you,” confided Thea. “Amy said that if we did, maybe you’d come home.”
His blasted ticker was going to kill him before he saw 40 at this rate. Amy stepped aside to let him in the house, but Erasmus detoured slightly to drop a kiss on her cheek. Just a brief peck, the sort of thing elderly aunts did to wiggly children. But if that were so, why did his neck feel hot?
Dinner was cozy and abundant. Thea wished to stay up late to celebrate her papa’s return, and by the time she drooped and allowed him to carry her up to the nursery, where her governess would take over, he too felt tired.
Erasmus had his sights set firmly on the plush mattress he’d missed all these months when he approached his bedroom.
But when he entered, something was strange.
“I’ve removed Phin’s basket from the bed. He’s getting to be a big boy now, and he sleeps for much of the night. Your staff helped me make a nursery for him next door,” Amy said, carefully opening the door to a connecting storage room where Erasmus could see the baby’s crib.
His son was old enough for a crib. He had the urge to shed a tear.
And then Erasmus realized the implications for his sleeping arrangements. That mattress, once separated into two by the baby’s basket, was now one marital bed.
He remembered being an untried lad with his first woman, and his throat was dry. Amy drifted from Phin’s nursery, softly closing the door.
She wore a nightgown, much as she always had, but suddenly, it resembled the stuff of fantasy. Perhaps he was tired from traveling, but her breasts and hips seemed hugged by the fabric. Was it sheer over her nipples? God help him if he let his gaze roam over that dark thatch between her thighs.
“Is this alright?” she asked, gesturing to the marital arrangement of their bed. “I could always—”
“I want you here with me,” he blurted.
“And I want you here with me,” she said, her chin held high. My, she was a brave girl, his wife. His blood roiled at the knowledge that she wanted him in her bed. Their bed. Did this mean that she wished to enjoy all the comforts of marriage?
Erasmus tugged at his boots, then socks. “So we’re clear, Mrs. Mangevileyn: when you say you want me in your bed…”
Amy lifted a trembling hand to the buttons on her nightgown. She opened the first one. “I mean that in every sense, Mr. Mangevileyn.”
He watched her unbutton further. All the while, he pulled off his own coat, waistcoat, and shirtsleeves until he stood with just his braces and trousers on.
Finally, she lifted the gown over her head with marvelous efficiency. Revealing her nude body to him for the first time.
He took in her dips and curves, cataloging the look of her skin in the lamplight of their bedroom. The placket on his trousers seemed stuck shut, and he cursed his tailor for potentially trapping him in Purgatory while his bride awaited his attentions.
And then it opened — at last — and he was free to wash. This time, for the first time, he didn’t duck behind a screen. Erasmus stood naked in the center of their bedroom, washing his travel-worn body before his wife.
He soaped his armpits, then brought his hands to his cock, which was now hard under his wife’s avid gaze. Erasmus took his time washing his sack, drawing back the foreskin of his cock to clean and rinse himself, and finally, running a hand over his manhood.
Her eyes were there, on his firm shaft. She scurried to the side of the bed.
“I’ll help you draw back the counterpane. We wouldn’t want it to get messy,” he said.
“Messy?” she asked faintly. Erasmus came behind Amy and reached around to aid in folding it away.
She turned in his arms. “I have a request.”
He stepped closer and felt her breasts touch his chest. He couldn’t look down, or he’d surely explode. His cock was bobbing somewhere around her hip, and the tip occasionally rested on her skin. Was this heaven or some hellish torture?
“What’s that?” he asked hoarsely. He’d give her anything at this moment. State secrets would drip from his mouth like honey should she but ask. It was a dangerous feeling.
“Not from behind,” she said.
Not from…he realized what she meant, and what inspired the request. It took everything in his power not to wrap her in an embrace and sob over his wife’s past pain.
Instead, he nodded. “We’ll face each other.”
She responded in kind.
