“I’m comfortable.” She set up a tidy little rocking. “I just…”
“What, love?” Beck dropped his forehead to hers. “Tell me. Please.”
“I want more.” Sara let go with a luxurious undulation and sighed against his neck.
Sainthood loomed within Beck’s grasp, but he declined for the greater pleasure of making love to the woman in his bed.
“I think we’ve earned a little more,” he said. “But you hold still now. I don’t want to take any chances.”
Immediately, she quieted and waited for him. When he flexed on a long, slow thrust, she moaned softly and melted around him. “Better,” she pronounced.
Beck found a rhythm, keeping his movements slow and languid but not letting himself open his eyes, not when the sound of Sara’s sighs alone was driving him beyond reason.
“I want to move, Beck.” Sara took his earlobe in her mouth and gently nipped him. “Just a little.” He nodded. His jaw was clenched too tightly for speech.
Sara didn’t warn him, though, that she was going to wrap her legs around him, lock her ankles at the small of his back, and use her considerable leg strength to anchor him to her. She added “just a little” movement to that shift in position, and Beck was lost.
His thrusting picked up depth and speed, and his arms locked behind Sara’s head.
“Don’t let me hurt…” He felt Sara’s fingers lace with his own, grounding him.
“Love me, Beckman.” She turned her head to kiss the heel of his hand. “Let go. It will be all right.”
She clasped him with the interior muscles he’d shown her earlier, and Beckman was undone, dissolved in pleasure and passion when he felt Sara’s body coming apart with him.
His restraint abandoned him as Sara’s body communicated its delight, gripping and pulling at him, proving to him graphically that his satisfaction was her own.
When he could not have sustained any greater experience of fulfillment, Beck hung over Sara on his forearms, stroking her hair as he pulled the breath back into his body by force of will.
God help him…
“Did I hurt…?”
Sara’s fingers brushed over his mouth then trailed around the back of his head to urge him down against her shoulder. While he waited, panting, for his wits to reassemble, she shifted her hips slowly, maybe treating herself to a little more pleasure, and surely answering Beck’s question the most convincing way possible.
“That’s all right then,” Beck said, realizing it might be a little afterthought of an orgasm making her quiver around him like that, not just erotic sensitivity. “You’re all right.”
She kissed his throat and cuddled into him.
He lifted up a little—the woman needed to breathe—but Sara’s fingers tightened in his hair, and so he lingered. He kissed her eyes and her cheek and her mouth, suckled her earlobe, and nuzzled her eyebrows. He closed his eyes and listened to her breathing, then buried his face in the fragrant cloud of her hair.
He could stay there, in that bed, feasting his senses on her forever. His cock was softening, but still Sara’s body held him gently, and he knew the temptation to start up again, to ease from the bliss of fulfillment to the bliss of anticipation, again and again.
She would not thank him, though. Not tomorrow, maybe not even the day after.
“I’ll be right back,” Beck said, kissing her mouth one last time. Carefully, he uncoupled from her body then crossed the room to retrieve the wash water. He tended to himself, his cock still sensitive, then wrung out the cloth and sat on the bed at Sara’s hip.
“Covers back.”
Sara complied, barely, so Beck had to reach beneath the covers to hold the cool cloth gently against her sex. “Now, I wish we had a chandelier hanging over the bed.”
“You want to peek?”
“I want to memorize the glory of you,” Beck said. “And I want to make sure you’re not… sore.”
“Stop worrying.” Sara’s smile in the moonlight was radiant. “I am not sore, and I will not be sore, and so far, I like this dallying business rather a lot.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” Beck turned the cloth over, giving her the cooler side. “I did not want to spend our remaining nights here playing cards.”
“You’re frowning. We can play cards if you insist.”
“It isn’t that.” Beck returned the cloth to the basin and climbed in beside her. “Budge up.”
“As we’re truly good friends now, I suppose?”
He arranged her straddling him, and bless the woman, she snuggled right down against his body.
“We’re friends, at least,” Beck said, wrapping his arms around her. He wasn’t a man who begrudged his partners affection, but neither in the usual course was he exactly interested in lingering in a woman’s bed. Still, he didn’t question the pleasure he took in Sara’s willingness to fall asleep in his arms. Didn’t deny he enjoyed stroking that glorious hair down her back long after dreams had claimed her.
He did, however, wonder why he felt as if, for the first time in his life, he’d unwrapped a lovely package, chosen and decorated just for him, and had been utterly delighted with his present.
Incongruous as it was, he felt as if he’d made love to an innocent—not that he had any experience to go by there—to a woman who’d waited just for him, and saved all her passion and regard just for him.
Which, considering Sara was a mother well past the first blush of youth, made no sense at all.
The weekend flew by, with Saturday spent in an exhausting marathon of shopping and Sunday spent largely recovering. Sara saw firsthand that Beck excelled at anything associated with commercial endeavor. Whatever they purchased, he had it sent to the inn and packed on their wagon so there would be no delay Monday morning loading and rearranging the wagon’s contents.
The way he spent money was to Sara nigh virtuosic. He didn’t waste it, though, he spent it, invested it. He bought the better quality product, assuring her more durable goods were the better bargain, even if they cost a little more.
She agreed and raised her sights accordingly.
For North, Beck dropped off measurements taken from the man’s boots at a little hole-in-the-corner establishment on a side street.
He purchased bolts of cloth for dresses, drapes, and everything in between, then moved on to sheets, towels, table linens, and other household goods. Sara noticed many of the merchants knew him, though a few made mention of not having seen him in some time.
“You are good company.” He passed her a tot of cognac at the end of their busy day and joined her with his own on the balcony. “It’s rare I can go shopping with a female and not end up wanting to run howling to the nearest taproom.”
“It’s rare I can go shopping with a man and not want to shoo him howling to the nearest taproom. With you, though, it isn’t shopping so much as provisioning, and in the quantities you were buying today, you had the attention of the merchants.”
“True, and with a pretty lady on my arm helping me make my choices.”
A pretty lady the clerks kept referring to as his wife. He’d let them—and so had Sara.
They sipped their drinks in silence, standing side by side on the moonlit balcony.
“When, exactly, do your menses next befall you?”
A day ago, Sara might have taken exception to such a question, but now, it struck her as a simple measure of their intimacy.
She thought a moment, then named a date. “Why?”
“We’re taking precautions to minimize the risk of conception.” Beck set his drink down without finishing it.
