“Mmm.” He took a nipple into his mouth, teasing the bud with nips and licks before sucking it into his mouth. She tasted clean, sweet, and his lovely wife made the most enticing little sounds and began to writhe at his touch.
Her hands roamed over him, stroking and caressing him into a frenzy as she worked her way down to his cock. Taking hold, she squeezed and ran her thumb over the head. His hips bucked uncontrollably against her. She slid her hand down from the head to fondle his testicles, and he feared losing control. He concentrated on the different methods of mining, of mucking out the mules’ stall, but it was no use.
Burying his face against her neck, Daniel reached between them and traced his fingers over her sex, touching the nub of her pleasure gently. Her hips came up off the bed, and he dipped a finger into her slick heat. He pressed against her there with the pad of his thumb, rubbing in a circular motion against her clit.
She moaned and grabbed onto his shoulders with both hands as if she needed to be moored. He inserted two fingers and increased the pressure and the pace of his ministrations until her entire body tensed and she begged him not to stop. Her thighs closed tightly over his hand as she came apart in his arms. She shuddered and sighed, and then she went slack.
He drew her close, rolled her beneath him and kissed her forehead, her cheeks, and finally her luscious mouth. She opened her thighs to him, and he slid his hands beneath her fine derrière, tilting her hips up enough that he could nudge his cock against her opening. He entered only enough that the head was inside her. “Ahhh.”
She groaned and rocked upward, and with his next thrust, he went a little farther. “Feels … so damn … good,” he rasped as he withdrew and slowly went in a little deeper.
“Yeah? Well you’re torturing me,” his dear wife scolded.
“I want to make it last,” he said as he withdrew again.
“Daniel, we have all night and the rest of our lives together. I want you now.”
He stilled, raised himself and stared down at his love. Brushing the damp hair from her forehead, he kissed her. Tenderness, and love mixed with desire took hold as he buried himself as deeply inside her as he possibly could, thrusting over and over until he went mindless and nothing existed beyond the pleasure engulfing him. Meredith met his pace, tilting her hips to take him deeper and tightening her inner muscles around his cock as he withdrew.
A coil tightened within him with each thrust until he lost control, and his hips rocked erratically. “Meredith,” he called out as his climax took him in a cataclysmic burst of pulsing bliss. As the last shudder racked through him, he collapsed in a boneless heap beside her, the aftereffects still sending throbbing pulses through him.
“I am a lucky, lucky man,” he croaked out as a euphoric languor spread through his entire body. “I love you, Meredith, but I’ll tell you true. The word hardly does justice to what I feel for you.” His eyelids were so heavy, he could barely keep his eyes open, and he yawned.
“I love you too, Daniel, and I know what you mean.” She rose from the bed and crossed the room to the ewer and bowl kept on the dresser.
He watched as she washed her intimate bits. Ordinarily, the sight would stir him again, but all he could do in that moment was appreciate her beauty. “Will you bring me a flannel, love? I’m not sure I can even walk at present.”
She grinned at him over her shoulder. “That good?”
“Aye.” He grinned like a drunk sailor. “Did our lovemaking feel different to you?”
“Do you mean because we actually had intercourse?” She blinked at him.
“Nay, though I have a very deep appreciation for that difference.” He sighed. “Tonight felt different to me, more intimate and …” He cast about for the right words. “Perhaps it’s because we’re married now, and I have this great sense of relief about that. What I feel is like finally coming home after being lost in the woods for a very long time. It’s as if something inside me has opened, giving way to a new kind of bond, the lasting kind. It’s the certainty I have that I can count on you through thick and thin.” He frowned. “Does that make sense?”
She returned to their bed and handed him a damp square of flannel before taking her place beside him again and arranging the covers so they could slip beneath them. “Daniel, you always make perfect sense to me. I truly believe you should consider writing poetry or at least a memoir.”
“Hmph. Beginning with my decades as a ghost?” He cleaned himself quickly and tossed the flannel across the room. It landed in the bowl with a slosh. Turning onto his side, he gathered Meredith into his arms so her sweet backside nestled against his groin. He wrapped himself around her and closed his eyes. “I had hoped to demonstrate my affection for you at least once more, sweet wife, but even as I say the words, sleep is taking me.”
“It has been an eventful day, and I can’t keep my eyes open either.” She burrowed closer, pulled the covers over their shoulders and placed her hand on his forearm where it circled her waist. “Good night.”
Daniel kissed the nape of her neck, taking in her unique scent. Content to the very core of his being, he slipped into slumber, his love tucked safely in his arms. May it always be so.
19
Dublin, Ireland, December, 1854
Daniel paced the front parlor of their rented townhouse as he waited for his wife to come downstairs. Today he’d reunite with his family, and too much excitement thrummed through his veins for him to sit still. Yesterday he’d sent a message to the
