During his eight years away from his wife, he’d visited countless churches in a desperate attempt to find salvation, a miracle that would take his dependence on opium away and return him to the woman he loved. But this moment, penitent before her as he prayed for her forgiveness, for her trust, was more humbling than any cathedral, any homily or prayer. She was his icon, his altar. And he would worship her.
He wrapped his palms around her ankles, the slim bones moving beneath his touch as he dragged them up with painstakingslowness. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, he justified the pace as giving her the chance to refuse him, to retreat. But he wassavoringher, avariciously memorizing every inch of her. The hard line of her shin, the taut muscle of her calf, the tendons on the underside of her knee. The strength of her thigh, that of a woman who lived on horseback, of a woman unafraid of the world. A woman deserving of praise.
Pushing up the hem of her linen drawers, he found the clips on her garters and unlatched first one, then the other. The wool stocking sagged. He swallowed his groan when his fingers touched the bare skin, the glance of his knuckles on her flesh nearly unmanning him as he lowered the fabric, retreating down her leg in the same painstaking manner that he had advanced. When he’d slipped the last inch of stocking over her ankle, the arch of her foot, and from her toes, he wanted to weep from the pleasure of it, the overwhelming gratitude of being given access to her like this, and the frustration of the task being complete.
“Philip,” she whispered, and she lowered her hand to drag her fingertips through the cropped hair at his temple.
He turned towards her touch, craving it,starved. “Tell me, Lily.”Tell me, wife.“What do you need?”
He knew. He could smell it on her skin, could taste the tension sparking between them.
Her belly, at his eye level, moved with her ragged exhale, as though she were fighting to maintain the last vestiges of her resistance. “I need… I…”
She was too proud to admit that she needed him; he’d spoiled the trust required for such an admission. But he needed to care for her, to give her the release she wouldn’t name. He strained his neck to meet her gaze, to implore her for her trust. “I asked you to let me care for you.” He took the mug from her trembling hand and set it on the floor beside them. “Will you let me now?”
Her lips were parted when she nodded, her chest pressing against the confines of her stays with each inhalation.
“Thank you,” he breathed, and pressed a kiss to her navel. She gasped, but he continued, his lips brushing over the bone at one hip. “Thank you.”
He held the hem of her chemise where it brushed against her shins and lifted, slowly. Her fingers curled at her side and released, curled again. The hand in his hair tightened.
Another kiss to the knot of her knee.Thank you. The muscles of her thighs.Thank you. He breathed his gratitude into the touch of his lips against her skin, glancing and chaste, were his nose not brushing the maddening edge of her drawers, the fragrance of her arousal teasing him, calling to him like a siren.
He wrapped his hands around the back of her thighs, and she wavered. “Stop?” he asked.
“No,” she breathed. “Don’t stop.”
More perfect words had never been spoken, and he chased the fabric higher, his nose and lips and tongue worshipping the soft skin on the inside of her thigh. “You’re more beautiful than I remembered,” he growled against her flesh. “So damned perfect. I thought I was imagining this.”
“You never had me like this.”
He paused to press his nose against her mound, the fine linen of her drawers still too rough. “I regret so many things about leaving you.” He inhaled deeply, and she shuddered, rocked her hips towards him as though seeking friction. “I only had you once, and it wasn’t enough.” He released the tapes holding her drawers closed and parted the fabric wide. “I’ve imagined all the ways I’d bring you pleasure, how you’d smell like this. How you’d taste.”
She hummed, a rough sound pulled from low in her throat.
“May I taste you, wife?”
He knew the risk of saying that word, but he wouldn’t allow Lily to pretend this wasn’t significant, to imagine this was anything other than what it was—a claiming, an act of redemption. One of the many ways he’d prove himself to her. Yet he held his breath, waiting for her refusal.
It never came.Yesemerged on a broken exhalation as she pulled him closer by the hair, and he pressed his mouth to the heart of her.
After shucking his dependence on opium, he’d known to avoid the lure of the pub or gambling hell for fear of succumbing to another destructive addiction. But after one taste of Lily, of hiswife,he realized he would be forever addicted to her. He lapped at the pulsing bud of her pleasure, flattening his tongue and pressing, flicking, until it had swollen under his attention.
This—her soft gasps of bliss, the twisting of her fingers in his hair, the plush give of her hips and thighs under his hands—was worth the struggle of making his way back to her. Those terribledays and endless nights of craving the drug and craving her, of wondering if she’d ever want to see his face again…
Though she couldn’t see much of him now. With his head buried beneath her chemise, her eyes closed as she hummed and moaned, his chest twisted. He would make her come a thousand times, forgo meals and rest to attend to her every need, but he needed her to remember why they’d been so good together before he’d ruined things. Why she’d fallen in love with him in the first place.
All too soon, her thighs were shaking, and he gripped her hips tighter to keep her standing as her climax overwhelmed her. Her fingers tugged at his hair, forcing his mouth against her pulsing clitoris as she rode the wave of her release. When her tremors stopped, she released him and curled over, clinging to his shoulders for stability.
But then she stepped back. She met his gaze for only a moment before she looked to the fire and bit her lower lip.
He stood. “Lily.”
She didn’t reply.
He closed the gap between them. “We’re not done here.”
Her brows furrowed. “What do you—”
