Page 92 of Tremaine's True Love

“Will you make love with me now, Tremaine? As a man makes love with a woman?” As a husband makes love with his wife?

“You need not ask, you know,” he said. “The two shall become as one flesh, and that means I’m yours for the having. I grow aroused simply watching you braid your hair.”

He was aroused now. Nita could feel him, hard, warm, and unapologetic against her hip. More than physical pleasure, more than an erotic education, what he gave Nita now was a form of marital trust she did not deserve.

“I’m asking, Tremaine. Make love with me.”

The wrongness of what Nita demanded blended with the arousal simmering through her to create a combustible mixture of longing and heartbreak. When Tremaine joined their bodies with one slow, deep thrust, Nita came apart again, more intensely than before.

“You just missed Copenhagen,” he teased, subsiding to a slow, rocking rhythm. “Next, we can love our way through Paris and on to Bonn. I do love you, you know. Very much.”

Nita would miss him for the rest of her life. “Enough chatter or we’ll miss Berlin.”

“Can’t miss Berlin, Geneva, or Rome…”

Tremaine loved Nita until she’d lost every part of her heart, and most of her wits, until she was sore and aching and an entirely different woman from the lady who’d thought to snatch a memory from a soon-to- be-former lover.

“Tremaine, please. Now.”

He understood. He hitched himself over Nita as she pressed her face to his shoulder and endured pleasure that had acquired an edge of hurt exactly fitted to the emotions wracking her.

“Hold me,” Tremaine rasped. “Never let go, not ever.”

He spoke not only as a lover, but also as a man who’d trusted Nita with his heart. When he spent his seed this time, Nita felt the warmth of it deep inside, and she held him as if she’d never let him go.

* * *

Dawn came late in winter, but hunger could wake a man when sunshine was in short supply. Tremaine remained curled around his beloved, sated in ways that had nothing to do with food and everything to do with a special license.

“You’re awake,” Nita murmured, rolling over. “Shall you go?”

Did she want him to go? The door was locked, the maids and footmen not yet stirring.

Tremaine rearranged himself, so his arm was around Nita’s shoulders and the glorious warm length of her tucked against his side.

“We never did decide what sort of house we’re to raise all those children in, my lady. Or shall I call youcomtesse?” After the night they’d shared, Tremaine was at risk for referring to his intended as lovey, lambie, and even lambie-love. “While you ponder your answer, I’ll tend to the fire.”

The room was chilly, but nothing like the shepherd’s huts Tremaine had known as a boy. Glorified windbreaks with a chimney, most of them, the better to lose the fire’s warmth to the howling night air.

Nita watched him stir the ashes, toss on some kindling and then a few coals. Despite the chill, Tremaine hadn’t bothered with clothing, it being a wife’s privilege to admire her spouse’s unclad form as much as she pleased.

And a husband’s privilege to be admired, though Nita’s gaze held anxiety.

“Shall I love you again?” Tremaine asked, rejoining her under the covers. “Whisk you past the pleasures of Athens?”

Nita bundled up next to him. “You shall not. I’m in need of at least three soaking baths. I doubt you’re in much better condition.”

Tremaine was in excellent condition, though a bit sore. “I can be a gentle lover, you know.”

Nita turned her face to his shoulder, as if he’d offered not a tease but a taunt.

“Nita, was I too rough? Be honest.”

She bit him gently. “You were nearly perfect. You even taste good.”

Tremaine heard thenearly, and unease prowled past a morning’s normal complement of desire.

“We never did talk about a house, my lady.” Again, that lure did not seem to catch Nita’s fancy.