“As could I.” He took her hand and put it against his own stomach. “This is a boring comparison, is it not?”
“You are an odd man.” An odd, dear man. Astrid slid her palm up to rest over his heart as she rolled against his side. “What are you thinking?”
He stared at the ceiling as Astrid let her hand drift over his exquisitely muscled—not boring at all—belly.
“I will need time to get used to being a husband. If I were more adept at it, I’d know some other way to ask this question.”
“Just ask.”
“I’ve been told women expecting a child can have intimate relations up until the last month or so, if they are so inclined.”
Astrid waited, not sure where he was headed.
He turned, so they were both on their sides again, facing each other. “Are you so inclined?”
Another surprise, though Astrid knew the answer to his question, and silently thanked him for posing it. “With you?” She touched his mouth with her fingers. “Always.”
“Can you still be comfortable on your back?” He kissed her fingers before trapping them in his own.
“I don’t know. We’ll have to find out.”
***
Six weeks ago Astrid had been a fine partner for some tender, exuberant sex. Andrew cared for her, but he’d certainly spent time with more experienced lovers. He’d had more creative partners, more sophisticated, more bold. But he didn’t miss any of them the way he’d missed her. He’d forced himself to send her only one brief note a week, not flowers, not love letters, not gifts. He’d tried to convince himself he was relieved to be simply a friend to her within her own family.
He and Magic had traversed every inch of Willowdale and Enfield, and all the properties in between, by day and by night, several times over. Andrew had brought every account book up to date, met every tenant farmer, and generally worked himself to exhaustion, trying to quell a voice in his head insisting he had to go see for himself that Astrid was well.
The voice in his head had been so loud and unrelenting through the previous sleepless night, he’d risen with the dairymaids and tooled into Town to join Astrid at breakfast.
What if he’d been more stubborn about ignoring that voice? What if the horse had sprung a shoe halfway to Town? What if a passing shower had made the roads muddy?
What if he’d died at the age of fifteen in that boating accident and never known the glory of loving her?
He brought his body over hers, noting that her stomach was convex now, where it had been flat before.
“I have missed you, Astrid.” He needed to tell her at least that.
“I have missed you as well, Andrew, terribly. And you needn’t loom up there like I’m made of spun glass. I love the feel of your weight on me, particularly your naked weight.”
“On your naked self.” On her warm, gloriously feminine, beautiful, naked self, which he absolutely did not deserve to touch, much less claim as her husband. “You must tell me if you are at all uncomfortable, dear heart. I would not hurt you for the world.”
She lay beneath him, his weight taken as much as possible on his knees and forearms, while he spent several quiet minutes kissing, nuzzling, and grazing his lips over her face, neck, and shoulders. Only when he felt her breathing slow and her body relax did he allow his mouth to settle over hers.
She opened to him on a welcoming sigh. As her tongue explored his lips and teeth, her hands gently kneaded his buttocks, urging him to rest more of his weight on her.
Carefully, he eased down, enough so his erect cock could tease and flirt with her sex. She spread her legs and brought them up to wrap around his flanks.
“Love me, Andrew,” she whispered.
“Soon. Soon.”
He’d dreamed this very scenario and woken up in an aching sweat more times than he could count, and he wasn’t about to hurry the delectable reality. He could kiss, nuzzle, and tease her like this for hours, desire at once sustained and muted by tenderness the like of which Andrew was at a loss to explain. Astrid, however, was becoming aroused, and more than anything, he wanted to give her pleasure.
He allowed his teasing to graduate to shallow, languid penetration. “I want,” he said between kisses, “to be gentle with you.”
“You are unfailingly gentle with me. That isn’t what I need now.”
Such honesty. He deepened his thrusts, holding her gaze, willing her to see that this gentleness felt different to him.
“Andrew.” She sighed his name, her eyes falling closed, her neck arching in pleasure. In blind abandon, her hands slipped around to his chest, where her fingers grazed across his nipples, sending tendrils of desire spiraling down to his cock, and out through his whole body. Still, he kept his rhythm slow, withdrawing and pausing before he thrust again.