Warren silently shakes his head, but when I move towards the sofa, he catches me about the waist and tugs me onto his lap.
“What are you doing?” I protest with a surprised laugh as he cocoons us inside the blanket. “You’re too cold to sit on! And it’s your own fault for going out in the snow!”
“Mhmm,” he moans into my hair, holding me tightly to prevent my escape. “You’re so warm. Besides, it was worth it.”
“Really?” I reply wryly, settling against his chest. His skin is still chilled beneath his shirt, but at least his stammer seems to be fading. “How can you say the possibility of losing your fingers”—or cock—“was worth it?”
“Because, wife. It got you in my lap, didn’t it?” The blanket pools at our waists as he cups my cheek with a still slightly cold hand. “And when I took off my clothes for you to see all of me, I’m almost certain that wasn’t fear on your face when you looked me up and down. Was it?”
He’s right. I didn’t feel any fear at all because I know his nakedness didn’t mean I would be hurt or taken against my will. “No, I’m not afraid of you,” I whisper.
Something settles in Warren’s warm brown eyes at my admission. “Good.” His voice, so deep and husky, gives me the chills as if I had been the one running mad in the snow. “You’ll never have cause to fear me, Mara. And make no mistake, wife, I wanted us both to win. I wanted you to look at me without clothes and not be scared, and I wanted to kiss you. One of those came true. Nothing else in this world would make me happier than for the other to follow suit. But when I do finally kiss you, I want it to be because you want me just as much as I want you.”
“I…I do want you.” His pupils expand at my admission and hide all the golden flecks in the thinned ring of brown. Now it’s my turn to stumble over my words as his thumb strokes back and forth. Maybe the heat of the fire is what steals my thoughts and has me swaying towards him. Or maybe it’s just Warren. “I mean…I think I…I want you to kiss me, too.”
“Are you sure?”
Something gallops beneath my palm.
His heartbeat.
How did my hands get here? I don’t remember touching him, but now I tangle my fingers in his shirt and pull him ever so closer. “No one’s ever kissed me before. And if anyone did, I would want it to be my…my husband.” Shyness almost stops me, but it feels so right to call him that. He’s mine. My husband.
“Mara.” A guttural groan bursts from him as he presses his brow to mine. “Again. Say it again.”
“Kiss me.”
“No.” Angling his head, he nuzzles my nose. “I mean yes. Always that. But tell me the last part again.”
“Husband.” I breathe it into his mouth as he steals the word from me. “I want you to kiss me, husband.”
“Wife.” A million emotions all wrapped up into that single rough word. The swell of butterflies explodes in my stomach at his reverent tone as he murmurs something else, but I don’t hear it. I’m too lost in his overwhelming presence as he stakes his claim, capturing my lips with a kiss so soft and small that it’s over before it truly begins.
Why did he stop? I barely got to experience it.
“Only one,” he says roughly. “That’s what you said.”
I did, but...I want more. And judging by the muted wildness in his eyes, so does he.
“To begin with.” I whisper his words back to him, and this time, I’m the one who leans in first. He deepens ourconnection, and although his hands never stray from my face, I feel him everywhere. The clean scent of him in my nose. The prickly texture of his facial scruff to my lips. The low groans of his desire in my ears.
Waves of unfamiliar sensation crash over me, and I anchor myself with clenched fists of his shirt as I clumsily give myself to him and accept him in return. It’s altogether perfect and altogether too much because now there’s no escaping the truths I rejected from him at every turn.
I’m not broken or dirty in my husband’s eyes.
I am simply his.
He eases away but presses lingering kisses across my chin and cheeks. “Hey, now,” he croons. “What are these tears for? Did you not like it?”
I glance up, surprised at the thick haze I have to blink away before the uncertainty on his face comes into focus. “I don’t—I didn’t realize I was crying.” Now that my lips are my own again, they feel strange as my words slip through them. Swollen, tingling, and throbbing with every beat of my heart. I smile, but it feels wobbly with the pure happiness running through me. “It was everything to me. Everything I’d ever dreamed it could be. You make me feel so…so cherished. Protected.”
“Always. You should always feel that way with me.” Warren wipes away a rogue tear and settles me against his chest. One hand lazily draws circles on my back, making my skin pebble and my nipples tighten. “And how about loved? Can you feel how much I love you?”
“Of course I can,” I blurt out over a small, nervous giggle. “I’m sitting on it now.” Good Lord. I don’t know how it’s possible, but his cock feels even bigger than when I first saw it. And it’s not dread or fear that tightens my stomach when it kicks beneath me.
No, it’s a sudden longing to give myself to my husband. Because if he takes such care with me in only a kiss, what would he do with the rest of me in our bed?
“And she laughs at me in my misery.” Warren groans deeply into my hair, making little pinpricks form at the heat of his breath. “That’s all right, wife. I’m not ashamed that my body tells you how much it loves you. Just know that my heart loved you first.” He tips my chin up, and when our gazes lock, there’s so much in his heated look. “For always and forever.”
