Maybe, she thought with a flicker of something that felt an awful lot like hope, he really meant it this time.
“Here,” he said, and his voice had never been softer than now as he reached back to tuck a coverlet over them both. “Are you warm enough?”
“I am,” Phoebe murmured, the words coming out sleepy and slurred as she snuggled even more firmly against him and tucked the blanket under her chin. “Are you comfortable?”
She was already starting to slip into sleep as she asked, as though her body wanted to cling to the memories of this moment to make them last as long as possible.
She scarcely heard it when he responded, his words a soft murmur that felt like they came from very far away.
“More than I’ve been in a long, long while.”
CHAPTER 23
As Aaron drifted toward wakefulness, he had the strangest sensation that he was—somehow, impossibly—back on a ship. Where else would he be hearing a quiet whistle of someone’s breath? Where else would he be feeling the gentle rise and fall that reminded him of the endless rocking of the waves?
Except… he’d never felt quite so calm while on a ship. And hedidfeel calm—calmer than he had since he was a child, perhaps.
He feltsafe.
Indeed, he felt safe enough that he did not feel a pressing need to immediately solve this little puzzle. Instead, he allowed himself to drift for a while longer, trusting that the details would come to him in due time.
And they did. He floated in and out of sleep, and each time he bobbed toward the surface, another piece of information revealed itself.
He was home. He was in his own bed. And the rocking and the sounds—that was Phoebe.
Phoebe. His wife. Safe. Here. With him.
Each detail clicked into place like a building block that heightened his satisfaction.
“I know you’re awake,” Phoebe murmured. Her head was tucked against his shoulder, and they were still entirely unclothed from the night before. Aaron had never spent a full night naked with a woman before; the kinds of quick encounters he’d enjoyed during his years in the navy had not lent themselves to such a thing, and the past few years had been spent in self-inflicted celibacy.
It was nice, waking this way. It was tempting to think that he could have more of this.
“Shush,” he chided. “I’m not really awake. You’re dreaming, probably.”
A ghost of a laughter huffed over his skin.
“My mistake,” she said, then pressed a kiss to his chest, right above his heart.
Something inside him cracked at that brief, chaste kiss. It cracked, but it didn’t hurt. It felt like the first step in shedding something that had been holding him too tightly. It felt like hecould take a deep breath when he’d been surviving on mere sips of air for years.
There was, of course, no going back to sleep after that, but Aaron found he didn’t mind, particularly as there was no rush to rise from their bed, either. Phoebe did not seem inclined to rush to start the day. Her fingers traced idle patterns across his arm in a way that caused sensation to shiver pleasantly over him. It was comforting more than arousing, but there was a great deal of satisfaction in learning that he could enjoy time with his wife like this, too.
She’d given him more than he’d ever thought that she could.
The idea made him wonder…
“Do you have something that you want for Christmas, Phoebe?” he asked.
To his surprise, the question—which he thought innocuous—made his sweet, soft armful of wife go rigid in a heartbeat.
“I’m… sorry,” he said—a fumbling, instinctual reaction. “I… don’t understand.”
Phoebe sighed, and it was the sort of thing that released tension from her body. It wasn’t enough to return her to the previous languid state she’d had upon waking, but Aaron began stroking a hand up and down her back in the hopes of returning her to that place.
“I think you may have been right about something,” she said, and he tried not to let his surprise appear in his movements. He kept caressing her lightly, then pressed a soft kiss to her hair for good measure.
“What’s that?” he asked gently.
