She didn’t know if her words or the involuntary flex of slippery muscles sent him over the edge, but he gasped and shuddered, eyes rolling back as his back arched. He angled his hips so that his pelvis rubbed just the right way in just the right spot. Lenore climaxed a second time, and Nathaniel groaned her name into her neck as he came.
They lay together in a knot of limbs and twisted bedclothes. Lenore no longer felt the chill and played idly with idea of opening the bedroom’s single window to cool them. She lay under Nathaniel, whose long body was draped over hers and most of the bed. His head rested between her breasts, a most convenient spot for him to press a kiss to a plump curve or a rosy nipple.
Lenore jumped and tugged a lock of his hair when his tongue flicked out to tease the tip. “Stop that,” she ordered and giggled. “I’m ticklish now.”
He raised his head to stare at her. She liked his half smiles very much. “I remember that too,” he said before returning to his favored spot with the promise to behave himself.
Silent laughter made his shoulders shake. Lenore tucked her chin and stared down at him. “Why are you laughing?”
He rose, bracing himself on his forearms where they rested on either side of Lenore’s shoulders. His fingers traced the contours of her ears and played in her hair. “Your mother must be beside herself. Her only child married to a bonekeeper.”
Lenore harrumphed, not at all liking her mother’s intrusion, even in casual conversation, into the bedroom. “I think she’ll secretly be glad I finally married. Maybe with enough time, and a few glasses of sherry to help her along, she might even refer to you as the Honorable Mr. Gordon, protector of the dignified deceased instead of ‘that creature’.”
Nathaniel’s expression brightened. “You truly think so?”
“No.”
He grinned. “Ah well, it’s a rare man who gains the affections of his mother-in-law.”
Lenore grimaced. “In this case, please consider it a blessing if Mama withholds hers.”
The grimace melted, and she sighed her pleasure when he feathered kisses down her nose, to her sensitive philtrum and finally to her lips, still swollen from his earlier attentions. “It’s of no importance to me, as long as I keep the affections of her daughter.”
Lenore cupped the sides of his head and lifted his face so she could look deep into his strange, ethereal gaze. “You will bring me great happiness,” she said in tones that demanded he believe her. “You already do.”
His lids dropped for a moment, hiding the expression in his eyes. She gasped when he opened them again, revealing the fires of devotion and hope. “You will bring spring and white roses to the graveyard,” he said, and his voice echoed back and back as if all eternity rose inside him to spill from his lips in a declaration of his faith in her.
Humbled and stunned, Lenore blinked back tears. She stroked his hair, his elegant face. “I will be content to bring you joy,” she said, her words thick in her mouth.
Nathaniel kissed her deeply before pressing his lips to her ear. “You do that simply by breathing. My Lenore.”
--END--