“Brie, love, lessons first, then dessert,” he laughed, dropping to sit before pulling her down onto his lap.
Her man might have only the purest intentions about the lessons, but the bulge under his plaid bumping against her bottom told her his body had other ideas. Ideas to match her own.
“It’s from Chase,” he said temptingly when she tried to turn in his lap. “News from your home. For your lesson today, you can read the letter to me while I relax.”
He scooted her off his lap and stretched out on his back, arms behind his head.
“Fine,” she relented. The sooner she blundered her way through the missive, the sooner they’d get to the “dessert” she wanted.
Chase formed his letters in the strangest fashion, which slowed her reading. She was able to decipher a few words quickly enough to realize the main reason for the letter, though.
“Malcolm and Dani have had their baby!” She scanned over the chicken scratching for more recognizable words. “A boy. They have a son.”
Damn her slow brain, but she couldn’t figure out half of the words Chase had written. “I canna find the babe’s name, Hall. Take this thing. Read it to me. Tell me what name they’ve chosen.”
“Only because my brother has the worst handwriting anywhere.” He hoisted himself up on one elbow and took the paper she held out, scanning over the whole of it before speaking again. “He doesn’t give the name, love. Sorry.”
“No mention of the name? Yer brother is an idiot, Hall O’Donar. Only a man would forget to share such an important detail.”
“Then we shall consider this an opportunity.”
There was mischief behind the smile breaking over his face. “And how would not knowing something be an opportunity for us?” she asked suspiciously.
“Because it will serve as a perfect excuse for you to practice your writing. You can send a note of congratulations to Malcolm and Dani and ask them what they’ve named their fine new son.”
Her husband was a fiend for practice.
“I will, indeed,” she agreed, turning to lean over him, one hand on either side of his body. “As you say, it’s the thing to do. But no right now. I’m done with my lessons for this Saturday and I’m thinking, because of the frustrating nature of that missive, that I’ve earned that dessert you tempted me with, aye?”
“Aye,” he agreed, fastening his hands around her waist as she straddled to sit on him. “We’ve both earned it.”
She pulled the tie from her hair as his hands wandered up from her waist to fasten on her breasts, just as she liked him to do.
Yet in spite of the lure of his obviously ready body, she could only picture a tiny nameless baby when she closed her eyes.
“I canna believe he did that.”
“Let it go, love,” Hall said on a sigh. “Later, when we pack up our blanket and return to the keep, you can busy yourself with planning the perfect revenge on my brother for having denied you that wisp of information that you wanted most out of his letter. I’ll even help you. We’ll think of something truly diabolical, if you like. Later.”
He wrapped one hand around the back of her neck and pulled her head down for a kiss while, with his other, he tugged at the skirt wrapped around her legs.
“If we ever have a babe of our own, I’ll see to it that yer brother doesn’t learn his name until he’s ready to take up arms of his own,” she threatened.
There. See how Chase Noble would like that.
“When, not if,” he corrected with a grin. “It will happen eventually. If we keep practicing your lessons, that is.”
“Lessons, my arse,” she replied, jerking her skirt out from under her so that she sat upon her husband, skin touching skin.
He closed his eyes, groaned, and slid both hands around her waist.
“If we do have children, I’d want them all to be sons,” she said.
His eyes popped open and he dropped his hands from her waist. “Why would you say that?”
It should have been obvious enough. She’d been raised by her father and her brother. “I wouldna ken what to do with a daughter, or how to begin to raise one properly.”
“You’re jesting, right? You’ll raise our daughters as you were raised. You turned out better than any other woman I’ve ever known, so why would we want to raise our daughters any differently?”
