with his full faculties, slowly opened his eyes. My God, he thought, aware of the soft body curled against his., Sunlight poured through the windows, splashing across his face, and he smiled, a besotted smile he imagined, and tightened his arm about his wife’s back.
Jules mumbled something in her sleep and obligingly nestled her cheek against his throat. She’s mine, he thought. He didn’t wake her just yet, content to think about the pleasant turn the world had taken. He couldn’t quite understand how she could still love him, but she’d said she did. Had loved
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him since she was twelve. A heady thought. ‘You’re a lucky bastard,’ he said quietly to
the bedroom. He’d prayed he could give her pleasure, but her naturalness had surprised him as much as it had excited him. He remembered so clearly the older woman who had taught him about women. Her name was Lottie. Older, ha! She’d been about the same age as he was now. She had seduced him, very gently, after he’d gotten word that Kathleen had died in Ireland. She had given him renewed life, then shown him how to satisfy a woman. He’d failed Kathleen, of course, but had been too ignorant to realize that she could and should enjoy sex as much as he. He’d learned since that most men considered it nearly a perversion if their wives enjoyed the marriage bed. More fools they.
Saint smiled, remembering Lottie’s exact words. ‘You’ve quite an aptitude for this, dear boy. Yes, indeed, I truly admire a man who enjoys his work.’
He slipped his hand between them very gently, again splaying his fingers to feel the width of Jules’s pelvis. She would have his children, but not more than two or three., he amended to himself. He would take no chance with her health, nor did he want her to bear a child every year until she was thirty. He wanted her to himself – himself and two
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daughters and a son. He was blissfully picturing a daughter, red-haired, vibrant, and loving, just like her mother, when he felt a smooth hand glide down his belly.
‘Jules?’ ‘Good morning, husband,’ she said, and continued the journey with his inquisitive hand. ‘Goodness,’ she said as her fingers closed around him.
‘What do you expect?’ he asked, nibbling at her ear. ‘I’ve been thinking about you for the past five minutes.’
‘I think, Michael,’ she said impishly, ‘that I have great power over you.’
‘At least part of me.’ ‘Michael?’
‘Yes, sweetheart?’
‘Will you teach me … things?’
‘I’ll teach you everything you want to know,’ he said with great conviction, and rolled her onto her back.
‘Lydia!’ Saint frowned. ‘Damn, I’d forgotten all about her.’
‘Oh dear, this is dreadfully embarrassing. Do you think she saw us?’
He laughed and kissed her deeply. ‘We’re married, Jules. And no, I sincerely doubt that Lydia, once she’d been in the other bedroom, would dare open the door to this one.’
qQq
Jules pressed her face against his throat. ‘I’ll never be able to face her!’
He breathed in the sweet scent of her hair and also the smell of sex. This bedroom, he thought, grinning, has never been so appealing before. ‘Tell you what, Jules,’ he said, his hand closing over her breast. ‘Ouch! Not quite so much enthusiasm, sweetheart.’
She released him, and giggled. ‘Shall I kiss it and make it well?
He gave her a wicked grin. ‘What a lucky man I am, married to a thoroughly lascivious woman.)
‘I think I like the sound of that,’ she said. ‘I do too. Tell you what, Jules, let me give you some instruction first, all right?’
‘What kind of instruction?’
‘Just lie still and attend to what I’m doing.’ When he lifted her hips in his hands and gazed intently down at her, Jules found herself trying to squirm away. ‘It’s daylight,’ she managed. ‘You’re looking at me!’
‘Yes,’ he said, his voice sounding hoarse in his own ears. ‘I’m not only looking, but I’m offering up thanksgiving to heaven. Now, you just be quiet, and don’t interfere with a man’s pleasure.’
She decided he had no choice, and he thought he would yell with pleasure when he felt her ease and relax, offering herself to him. qQA.