His lips twitched into a soft smile. “Catnip …”
“I might have thought about … that night … every single waking moment for the past few weeks. And often the non-waking moments too. And somehow my memory—which was mind blowing, for the record—didn’t do the reality of you justice.”
“Are we idiots?” he asked, leaning closer to trace his lips over my cheekbone. “For trying to pretend it was possible for us to be … less than this?”
My chest suddenly felt too tight, like a balloon was inflating in there and it may just lift me off the bed and float me away.
“The biggest idiots,” I agreed, tilting my head to fit my mouthagainst his. All the other things I was feeling could be said better with a kiss than with any words I might be able to summon.
We kissed, lazily, languidly, for long moments before Henry pulled away. I sighed in disappointment, and his face slid into a soft smile as he reached for my box of tissues on the bedside, pulling out of me and cleaning me up.
“We made quite a mess together, didn’t we?” he remarked quietly. I grinned.
“The best kind of mess.”
He stood from the bed, cock bobbing, and headed to the bathroom to discard the soggy tissues. His cock was still semi-hard when he returned; the size of him was mouth-watering. I suddenly longed to fit my lips around him, to take him deep into my throat, to make him come completely undone with my mouth the way he had me.
I wondered if he could go again so soon, or if he’d need a few hours to recover. But before I could ask, he took my hand, gently tugged me up from the bed and led me to the bathroom. Inside, he ran the shower just how I liked it—hot enough to almost cook the top layer of my skin—and stepped in after me, grabbing my body wash and starting at my shoulders.
I sighed again, this time with the sheer enjoyment of the water on my skin and his big palms massaging bubbles into me.
“It almost feels like this is your favourite part of the whole sexy-time process, Hubby,” I murmured when he’d gotten past all the fun bits and was on his knees in front of me, soaping my calves. I reached down to stroke his head, and he glanced up at me, blinking water from his eyes.
“I love every part of sex with you, Catnip,” he said in that heart-stoppingly earnest way of his. “But this partisspecial … I never did this with Cadence. She …” He sighed, getting to his feet. “I shouldn’t talk about my ex, should I?”
I reached for him, pulling him into my arms. “You should. No more secrets, remember?” My voice caught on the words. There was one big secret … but I couldn’t talk about it. Didn’t want to relive it, not with him, not even in my own head.
“She never wanted to … well, to do anything after. Or during, if I’m honest. She hated me talking dirty, said it was degrading. She got impatient when I … when I went down on her. And after, she’d get up, go and wash herself—without inviting me—and she’d come back to bed, already in her pyjamas, and she’d immediately grab her laptop or a book or anything that meant I wasn’t invited to join in. It was like sex with me was a box she needed to check, nothing more.”
I squeezed him tighter, heart aching for this beautiful, giving man and the selfish harpy who had been lucky enough to call him hers for years.
“I’m glad things didn’t work out between you,” I confided, my lips brushing his collarbone. “You deserve so much more than a woman who clearly had no idea how special you are.”
Tears prickled at my eyes, and I blinked them back. “She was missing out big time on the Henry Baxter aftercare experience—I’ve never been so clean as when you wash me.” I grinned cheekily, reaching for the body wash. “And her loss is my gain, because now I’m the lucky one who gets to makeyounice and clean too.”
I massaged the suds into his pecs, down his abs. He let out a shaky breath as I swirled the soap lower. “I think there’s one part that needs extra attention. It did get quite dirty, just now.”
Henry braced his hands on the wall on either side of my head and leaned through the shower spray to find my lips, just as my soapy hand found his growing cock.
As it turned out, Henry didn’t need much down time at all …
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
My Woman. My Wife
HENRY
“Tell me about Andrei,” I asked.
We were clean and clothed and had climbed back into her bed. I thought that maybe enough time—and enough orgasms—had passed since I’d found her screaming that she might be ready to open up about him. “Not just what happened at the end, but from the beginning.”
She let out a shuddery sigh. “It’s not a very happy story.”
I wrapped her tighter in the circle of my arms. I had a feeling there was not much at all that was happy about her upbringing, and my chest ached for the girl she’d been and how it had shaped her into a woman who believed that sharing her pain was selfish.
“I’m here, Catnip. We can shoulder the heavy things together. Besides, you loved him. And I want to know about the things you love.”
“Okay,” she agreed shakily, and with a deep breath, she talked. About the tiny baby who had arrived the same time her mother had left her. The little boy who had at once been so terribly smart and so wildly intense.
