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Michael curled his fingers, stroking some delicious place inside, and Gwen sobbed, grabbing fistfuls of his hair as her thighs began to tremble. Panting and unable to still the insistent roll of her hips, she stammered out his name, incoherent syllables wrapped in whimpers of pleasure.

“Just like that.” He praised, then wrapped his other arm beneath her hips, urging her to give him more, growling and grunting as he sucked noisily at her quim.

“Micha…” she begged, sucking in a breath as that tangled, impossible knot he’d wound tighter and tighter suddenly gave way, every unbearable thread of tension unraveling at once.

Michael held her as she bucked against his mouth, steadying her with one hand while he worked her with the other, slowing only when the last fluttering twitch of pleasure had eased. Her muscles sagged, spent and exhausted as she lay there with his fingers still buried intimately inside her. Michael seemed reluctant to part from her, his cheek nuzzling the soft skin of her belly as her heart gradually fell into a steadier rhythm. When he withdrew, she throbbed where his fingers had been.

Michael wrapped his arms around her hips then, his head a comforting weight on her stomach. Silent minutes passed, and she could feel the strain in every line of his body, knew he’d found no release of his own. Instead, he’d gone unnaturally still, holding himself in check with a discipline so absolute it looked painful.

She tried to ignore it. Truly, she did. But as the last echoes of the bliss she’d experienced slowly ebbed away, his tension became impossible to overlook. Finally, when she could take it no longer, she looked down at him.

He must have felt her shift, but he didn’t move.

“Go to sleep, Wyn.”

It was rough, barely a whisper, like a voice gone raw from screaming, and that meager sound was all that remained.

Gwen shook her head, confused.

He was aroused. She’d heard it in his words. Felt it. Knew without a doubt that his body must be in a riot of frustration. If he felt anything akin to what she’d experienced before he’d taken her apart, she could not fathom how he would ever sleep.

“But…”

“Sleep,” he bit off her words, but his tone was no less patient than before.

Gwen obediently closed her eyes, listening to the fire crackle and the steady sound of his breath, but despite her sated body, she could not rest.

“Michael…”

The sound that escaped him revealed his growing impatience. A beat of silence followed before he spoke again.

“Gwen. Will you allow me to remain as I am now, holding you?”

Her sluggish, satiated body had scarcely taken note of the way they remained entwined, him on his belly between her splayed legs, his cheek pillowed atop her stomach, the coverlet drawn high over his shoulders. Their coupling had rendered this intimacy strangely normal. It shouldn’t have—after all, she’d avoided touching Michael, or even speaking to him, for weeks. Yet it felt… nice. Too nice to let her anger and pride strip away this comfort.

“Yes.”

She felt a barely discernable nod against her belly.

“Thank you. That’s all I want.”

Gradually, his head grew heavy, yet she could still sense his wakefulness. And so the restless energy between them lingered despite his obvious effort to will it away.

“It’s only… I wouldn’t stop you if⁠—”

Michael growled, a low, menacing sound beneath his breath. “Yes, I’m hard as stone,” he pressed the words out between clenched teeth—yet even that effort showed restraint. “But it will pass.” Silence followed, and she could feel him marshaling his patience.

When Michael spoke again, his tone was steady once more, free of the temper that had flared with her prodding. “I am in no rush, Gwen. You neither like me nor want me, and I am well and truly deserving of both. It will be more than enough if you allow me to give you pleasure each night.”

Softer still, a note of vulnerability creeping in. “It’s… lovely…to hold you… and be held by you. When the time comes that you want me…” He drew in a shuddering breath, then let it out. “Then I shall rejoice as no man, living or dead, in the history of the world ever has, and make love to you until we collapse from exhaustion or starvation… whichever comes first.”

Another stretch of silence.

“What if I never want you?”

“Then I will have the hardest dick and the most satisfied wife in Wales.” He said with dry, deliberate solemnity. “Now, will you please, for the love of God, go to sleep, Gwendolen Anson.”

She bit back a smile and closed her eyes, allowing the steadiness of his weight and the strength of his arms, wrapped about her, to carry her into sleep.