He grinned. “Handsomely. Guardians are social outcasts but valuable nonetheless. The Guild and the Company understand our worth and contribution. Even if they didn’t, Gideon would make certain to enlighten them.”
Having now met the dour, imposing Gideon, Lenore wondered what exactly his form of enlightenment entailed. She gave a delicate shiver and sipped the warm tea Constance and Rachel served to everyone.
Once the guests departed with good wishes and congratulations—even from Jane—the house settled into an intimate silence. Nathaniel reclined in a chair near the fire and tugged Lenore into his lap. Lenore wound her arms around his neck and stole a kiss from him.
“Are you glad it’s over?” she asked.
He nuzzled the warm spot near her temple, just above her ear. “I’m glad it’s just begun,” he said.
She melted in his arms. “You always did have a honeyed tongue, Nathaniel Gordon.”
He trailed a line of soft nibbles across her cheek to the corner of her mouth. “Care to taste?”
“Oh yes.”
He did taste of honey and the pomegranate wine he’d chosen over the tea served earlier, and Lenore savored the feel of his mouth on hers, his tongue gliding across her teeth to tangle with her tongue in a match neither won and at which both excelled.
She gasped into his mouth when he suddenly rose in one smooth motion, still clasping her tightly against him. “Bedroom,” he muttered when they took a second to breathe. She nodded and laid her head on his chest, listening to his strong, steady heartbeat as he carried her effortlessly up the stairs.
Their bedchamber, once an empty room shrouded in dust, held a bed, wardrobe, vanity and mirror. A chest footed the end of the bed. Lenore had proclaimed the room complete when she filled the chest and the wardrobe with personal items and clothes, including the precious ambrotype of a Nathaniel gone but not forgotten.
Her new husband set her down so that they stood pressed together by the side of the bed. His mouth curved up on one side. “I will give you anything you desire if you let me play lady’s maid.”
Her fingers walked across his shoulders. “You are a man of many talents, it seems.”
“No, only a few, but I excel at those.”
How very, very fortunate she was to finally call this man hers. The joy welling up inside her threatened to burst free in an embarrassing barrage of tears guaranteed to alarm Nathaniel and turn her face into a splotchy, hideous visage. Instead, she clutched the safety of lighthearted innuendo and teasing. “Prove it,” she said.
His eyebrows shot up, and the wicked grin spreading across his face made her laugh. “I could never resist a challenge.”
True to his boast, he made short work of her wedding dress and corset with its miles of lacing. They made a growing pile on the floor, along with her petticoats and crinoline, shift and small clothes. He paused when she stood before him wearing only a pair of garters and filmy stockings that did nothing to warm her legs. His spectral gaze blazed, burning hotter as it touched on her shoulders and bare breasts, the curve of her waist and flat expanse of her belly, the slope of her hips and length of her legs.
He had seen her naked before, years earlier. Then, it had been a furtive, forbidden union, no less pleasurable for its risk but infinitely less stirring than this moment when they stood together in the room they shared as man and wife. Lenore fought down a blush and raised one leg, her stockinged toes caressing his shin. “Don’t you want to finish?”
Nathaniel’s voice was guttural. “I suspect I’ll be finished before we’ve truly started.” He gestured to her stockings. “Leave those on and loosen your hair for me.”
She did as he requested, sauntering to the dressing table to seat herself naked before the mirror. Nathaniel didn’t follow, but he turned to watch her, his eyes bright in the room’s dim light. Lenore took her time removing the pins, setting each one carefully on the vanity. With each pin out, a curl unfurled to fall down her shoulders and back until her hair cascaded over the chair and pooled in her lap.
Her husband’s breathing panted harsh and loud in the room. She met his eyes in the mirror’s reflection, noting the flare of his nostrils, the silvery shadows that smudged his cheekbones and the way his chest rose and fell as if he’d run across London Bridge a dozen times without stopping.
“My God,” he said in a choked voice. “You’re even more beautiful than I remembered.”
She smiled, warmed to her toes by his fervent compliment. Desire unspooled in her belly, sending liquid heat through every part of her before settling into a throb between her thighs. “Your turn,” she said softly.
Her startled bleat nearly ruined the sensual atmosphere when Nathaniel closed his eyes and went from being garbed in black from neck to feet to bare, pale nudity in an instant. His expression had sobered, a touch tentative as he watched her leave her seat at the vanity to stand before him.
She once likened him to a marble statue. How unknowingly accurate she’d been in that comparison, and he was garbed then with only his hands and face hinting at his overall paleness. The Nathaniel she’d first fallen in love with had been a man of average height with broad shoulders, muscular arms and a powerful, easy stride. The Nathaniel who claimed a droll’s body as his was muscular in his own right, taller and leaner with the long, wiry body of an acrobat.
Looking at him was like looking at the living representation of a Greek myth gone awry, in which a mad Pygmalion begged an even more perverse Aphrodite to bring a male Galatea to life. The goddess had done it with torture and lightning. The sculptor scientist perished, but his creations lived on. One of them married Lenore.
“You are truly lovely,” she said, breathless at the sight of him. The silvery color shadowing his cheekbones spread down his throat and across his chest. Lenore’s gaze dropped, and her lips parted. “Oh my.” He might share the same milky skin tones and muscular physique of any of the Greek and Roman statues but God, or the mercurial Aphrodite, had been far more generous than the sculptors when endowing the living man.
Nathaniel followed Lenore’s wide-eyed gaze to his erection, swollen and stiff. His hands fluttered at his side as if to cover himself and went still at Lenore’s abrupt “Don’t.”
Lenore wet her lips with her tongue, smiling faintly at Nathaniel’s sudden focus on her face. “It must have been a...challenging task, flipping and tumbling about with such a...” She frowned, searching for the right word.
“Weapon?” Nathaniel offered. They shared a chuckle.
