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“No.”
“What was it like, yer first time?”
I swallowed past the tension in my throat. Now? He’d ask me now?
“We’d been dating for a year already. He’d been very patient. Sometimes we shared a bed and he didn’t even try to sneak a hand into my pants, or dry hump me. But when he booked a hotel for my twentieth birthday, you know… some country place… I decided I couldn’t hold out any longer. So we did it.”
Caelan stroked both calloused hands along my upper arms, my gooseflesh meeting his gentle but unmistakable touch. “What was he like?”
I closed my eyes trying to remember. “That first time? Or in general?”
I looked over my shoulder and he shrugged. “That first time.”
Staring ahead, I said, “I don’t remember.”
“Ye dinna remember?” he exploded.
“I was so scared, I… don’t remember.” My teeth chattered slightly which was odd. The large slanting windows in the attic made it warm most of the time, especially if the sun had been high in the sky, which that day it had. Caelan took my hand and rubbed his thumb over the back of it. “It was just something I wanted over and done with. Afterwards, I wasn’t hurt and was surprised. I even let him try again. But I didn’t love him, or really want him, Caelan.”
“So… why?”
I nearly choked on shock. “We’ve been married nearly a year and a half and you wanna know now?”
“Sometimes I wish we’d found out more about one another before we began, Flora.” He gnashed his teeth. “Other times I realise you wouldna huv married me otherwise.”
I had to chuckle at that. “True.”
Something shifted in the air between us and he said softly, “We huvna made love since the bairn.”
We’d cuddled, I’d felt him hard against me, but I hadn’t felt horny yet. I loved to have him hold me, kiss me, but it wasn’t easy. I thought I owed him some titbit, anyway.
“My artist lover had a bad time of it with me. I wasn’t ready. I thought I was. I wasn’t. Maybe he wasn’t so bad, but he had a time of getting me to reciprocate. I guess it ended toxically. He probably thought it was him. It wasn’t. It was what’d happened in the past.”
Caelan moved up right behind me on the floor, wrapped his arms tight around my waist, then buried his face in my hair, his legs outside of mine.
“I love ye so fucking much, Flora.”
His words thrilled me, reminding me just why we married, how we ended up pregnant. I stroked my fingertips through the golden silk of his forearm hair, and said, “I love you wildly, Caelan.”
“Then be with me. Let’s… try. It’s me. Ye ken me. I’m yer husband. I yearn for ye so deeply, lass. Yearn for ye like ma heart might burst if I canna love ye.”
I nodded and stood up, then offered my hand to help him up. His gaze held promise and quiet joy, but also restraint. I led him out of the room and down two flights to our room on the first floor. The baby was sound asleep and I unclipped the monitor from the pocket of my nightshirt, switching it off and placing it on the nightstand.
Caelan trembled with longing as he got undressed. I lay on the covers unsure of myself.
“Turn out the lights,” I said.
“I see my loving wife,” he said shakily. “My gorgeous, sexy wife.”
I stared hard and he eventually switched off the light.
We got beneath the covers and he was already hard, his naked body pressed to my clothed one. His breathing was hoarse and he grasped my hip, my bottom, his eyes shining in the darkness.
“You don’t know how to be gentle, Caelan.”
“I ken how to win. And if ye tell me to win ye by being gentle, that’s what I’ll be.”
Sniggering, I said, “Be gentle to win me, then.”
