Her feet were cold, bare against the packed earth of the floor. She raised the left one to warm against the right.
"Cold feet?" he asked.
She lifted her head and smiled fully at him. "Yes and no," she said. "Mainly no." And she watched the laughter gather in his eyes again as he leaned down and swung her up into his arms.
The bed was soft and comfortable against her back. Surprisingly so. He had put a down-filled cover beneath the sheet, she realized. She watched him pull his shirt free of his waistband and remove it entirely. And she watched as he pulled off his Hessian boots and undid the buttons at his waist.
He watched her the whole time, watching him, unashamed, uncovered, waiting for him. He watched her glance at him as he removed his pantaloons, and swallow.
The bed had never been meant to hold two. But soon enough they would take up no more space than one. He lay carefully on his side beside her, propped on one elbow.
"Feet warmer?" he asked her.
She set one against his leg. It was cold.
"I have a cold woman in bed with me?" he asked, lowering his head, pecking at her lips.
"No," she said. "The woman is warm enough from the ankles up."
"Is she?"
"Yes." There was a catch in her voice. He deepened the kiss. And he feathered one hand over her breast, his thumb circling the tip before touching it, brushing over it. He felt her draw in breath.
The slow languorous time of love was past. The heat of passion was back, but with it an intimacy that went beyond the mere physical. She could feel it in his hands, in his mouth, his body. And it was with the love at the core of her, not just with her hands and her mouth, that she touched him.
She let her hands roam over him, touching leanness and hardness and muscle. And warmth and dampness and desire. She explored him and touched him as she had never dreamed of touching Andrew. And she wanted him. She wanted him with a fierce ache. She wanted him at the core of her. She wanted to give and receive everything. All that there was.
"Max."
It was an ache that he was building to an almost unbearable tension. He was touching her where she had never been touched with a hand, with fingers, stroking, parting, feathering, tickling. Pushing inside. Deeper inside. She felt her muscles clench around him.
"Max."
"I want to be there," he said. His voice was low against her ear.
"Yes."
"Do you want me, Judith?"
Foolish words. Her body and her voice were crying out for him. "Yes."
"There?"
"Yes."
"Here?"
His weight was on her, his blessed weight, bearing her down into the softness of the bed, and her thighs were being opened against the hardness of his legs, and he was there, pressing where his fingers had been, holding, waiting.
"Yes."
He was watching her, her eyes tightly closed, her face tense. Beautiful. And he savored the moment. The moment for which he had waited all his life. This was not something he would do in quick frenzy. He was going to love her as he had dreamed countless times of doing it. In a moment he would be inside her and she would be his. And he would be hers. She opened her eyes.
"Like this," he said. "Like this, Judith." And he held her eyes with his as he entered her, feeling himself gradually sheathed in heat and moistness and contracting muscles.
"Yes," she said. Her voice was almost a sob.
He had to lower his head and close his eyes for a moment so that he would not lose control.
It had always been a purely physical thing. Not quite unpleasant except toward the end when she disliked and despised Andrew. But not quite pleasant either. Something a little embarrassing, a little distasteful. A duty. Something she had always wanted to be over and done with quickly. She had never, even in the early days of her marriage, really enjoyed the sexual act.
There could be nothing more physical than what was happening to her now. An act performed slowly and in nakedness. Heat. Depth. Wetness. The sound of wetness. A slow deep rhythm.
And yet there could be nothing more beautiful on this earth. His body. Hers. Himself. Herself. Their love meeting and entwining and expressing itself inside her. Both of them inside her, exchanging love, exchanging selves in the slow rhythm of the early stages of the love act. One body. The phrase suddenly made perfect sense to her.
"Max?"
''Mmm.'' He lowered his head to hers, kissed her warmly.
"Max, it hurts."
"Does it?" He continued to kiss her, felt her hips move against his, felt the stirrings of climax in her, and speeded his rhythm.
He could not wait much longer. He wanted the closeness, the intimacy, never to end. He wanted never to let her go, never to allow her to be free of him. But the physical act must end. It was time for the ultimate giving and receiving. He wanted to feel her final surrender, the final opening to him, the final pushing beyond the barrier of her tension. And he wanted to give himself, his seed, his future to his woman.
And she was coming to him, lifting to him, tensing against him, whimpering, and then opening and stilling with the wonder and shock of her surrender, and shuddering and reaching for him and crying out his name.
And his seed sprang in her and he held her to him, feeling all his strength, all his tension drain out of him and into the woman he had loved all his life, for all eternity. He heard the sound of her name.
When she woke up, she was lying on her side pressed warmly against him, her head on his shoulder, his arm about her, the blankets up around them both. She could not remember ever feeling quite so comfortable.
The room was warm, the fire crackling in the hearth. He had got up some time after their first loving and built it up again before returning to the bed to love her again.
She could not see the room because she had her back to it. But she could picture it in her mind, small and snug. An idyllic cottage in the woods. She wished they could spend the rest of their lives there, and smiled at the thought. The two of them and Rupert and Kate all together in the one-roomed cottage for the rest of their lives. And perhaps… well, she had made the calculations last night. She had known
even before leaving the house with him that this was quite the most dangerous part of her month. And he had loved her twice.
The two of them and Rupert and Kate and a black-haired baby. She smiled again at the absurdity of her own thoughts and tipped her head to look up at him. He was awake and gazing back at her, his face quite serious.
"What are you thinking?" She raised a hand and laid the backs of her fingers against his jaw.
He shook his head slightly.
"I was thinking about our living here in this cottage for the rest of our lives," she said. "Silly, is it not?"
"Yes," he said.
"How long have we slept?" sheasked. "It is still daylight outside, but we will have to be going back soon, won't we?"
"Yes," he said.
"Mmm." She sighed. "I wish we did not have to. Don't you?"
"We have to," he said. He was still not smiling.
"Max." She rubbed her face against his chest, kissed him there, and tipped her head back again. "I love you."
He looked back at her and said nothing.
She rested her fingertips against his cheek and gazed into his eyes. There was something there, something far back in them. "What is it?"
"I am embarrassed," he said.
"Embarrassed?" She laughed, but he did not smile. She sobered again.
"I thought you understood," he said. "You did understand, did you not, Judith? That this is just a Christmas flirtation?"
Her hand stilled against his cheek. She frowned slightly. "No," she said. "No, Max. Don't do this. It is not funny. Don't look at me like that."